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Gentile Authorship of the New Testament
By Author Eli Kittim
Paul forbid Gentiles from keeping the Mosaic law. He warned that if you keep the law you’ll be cut off from grace. I don’t know about you but Paul doesn’t sound like a Hellenistic Jew to me. Sounds more like a Gentile!
Paul was probably not a Pharisee. Jerome suspected this early on. In his debate with Mike Licona (“Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?” 2018), Bart Ehrman said he doubts that Paul knew Aramaic! What kind of a Jew doesn’t know Aramaic? There are many reasons why the Pauline narrative in Acts may not be factual; a) the idea that Paul was a disciple of Gamaliel is mentioned only in Acts, a book that was written much later than Paul’s letters. In Acts, we are told that Paul is a Pharisee and that he’s persecuting Christians at the behest of the high priest in Jerusalem. This cannot be possible because b) the high priest was a Sadducee, and the Sadducees (not the Pharisees) ran the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 5.17). Moreover, the Sadducees and Pharisees were bitter rivals, enemies who disagreed on a number of topics, including spiritual ones. So, it seems rather absurd that a Pharisee would be working for a Sadducee; c) the high priest in Jerusalem had no jurisdiction in Damascus, Syria. The point is that this story couldn’t have happened in the way that Acts describes it.
The same holds true for the trial of Jesus in the Gospels. Everything about the trial seems preposterous, from the notion that it was held at night to the idea that it took place on the day of Passover, and even some of the details seem rather improbable if one understood Jewish law.
If we look at the rest of the gospels, including Acts (the so-called 5th gospel), we’ll come to realize that the authors are seemingly unfamiliar with the local geography, customs, feasts, idioms, language, law, and the religion of the Jews. If we then look at the scholarly consensus as to how the NT authors copied the Hebrew Bible, it will give us some clues with regard to their ethnic identities. It is well-known among scholarly circles that the New Testament authors quoted predominantly from the Septuagint rather than from the Hebrew Bible. Obviously, this indicates that they were not familiar with the Hebrew language and could not understand it. Furthermore, Greek was the lingua franca. But the lingua franca was only used for commerce, not for writing sacred scripture! If the New Testament was written in Greek because it was the lingua franca, then we would expect most of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be written in Greek. But that’s not what we find. Most of them are in Hebrew, thus disproving the lingua franca hypothesis! Devout Jews preferred Hebrew. Besides, the New Testament was supposed to be a continuation of Jewish scripture! The Jews not only couldn’t understand Greek but they forbade their own from writing in it because it stood for everything anti-Jewish. Even according to modern Jewish scholars, Jews of the first century couldn’t have been such highly literate individuals in Greek to be able to write the New Testament with such refinement and eloquence. Nevertheless, the New Testament was written exclusively in Greek. And we also know that the NT authors wrote their books from various places outside of Palestine.
All in all, from the discrepancies in the stories themselves to the authors who wrote them, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Gentile authorship of the New Testament. In other words, the authors of the New Testament were neither Jews from Judea nor Hellenistic Jews from the diaspora but rather Gentiles who were highly literate, but who didn’t understand the finer points of Jewish life in first century Palestine.
Mark Lehman Strauss, an American biblical scholar and professor of the New Testament
Was Mythicism or Historicism More Dominant In the Early History and Development of the Christian Church?
By Goodreads Author Eli Kittim
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Preface
There are certain things in the Bible that we all take for granted today, such as the historicity of Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the like. We think that these “facts” were written in stone and have been known since Christianity’s inception. How can anyone seriously challenge them?
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Christian Origins
But early Christianity was not monolithic. It was diverse. There were many different sects that held very different views both about Jesus and the interpretation of the New Testament. Orthodoxy eventually won the day but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily represented the sect that held the hermeneutically-correct and valid Bible interpretations or that they had the correct view about Jesus. Far from it. There were, in fact, diametrically opposed views that ranged from one extreme to another, from a completely human Jesus to a phantom or a ghost that never really existed. But, as we will see, there is a middle ground where mythicism and historicism meet.
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Gnosticism
The New Testament is a literary creation. So it’s difficult to probe its historical antecedents. What were some of the opposing views to “Orthodoxy”? One of the most vocal of these Christian sects was centred in Alexandria, Egypt: the Gnostics. They were the first advocates of the “you-don’t-need-religion, you-need-a-relationship-with-Jesus” pitch. Although there were many splinter groups, they all emphasised a personal “gnosis” (knowledge) and acquaintance with spiritual realities rather than a preoccupation with dry religious discourses and traditions. They originated in the first century C.E. and flourished until the second century, during which the Patristic Fathers denounced them as heretics. But were they? According to Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, they were the genuine Christians of that early period whom the Orthodox Church tried to suppress!
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To be sure, their theology was influenced by Greek thought, but the focal point of their doctrine and practice was not based on rhetoric or dogma but rather on personal existential experience. And based on their own inimitable style, one can infer that they had better insights into the divine than their orthodox counterparts who did little more than debate the issues.
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Docetism
Then there were the Docetists, who held the “heterodox” (i.e. “at variance with orthodoxy”) doctrine that what appeared to be a historical Jesus was nothing more than an apparition or a phantom, and that his phenomenological bodily existence was not real. This is actually more in line with Scripture, which repeatedly talks of visions and apparitions in one form or another (cf. Lk 24.23–24; Gal. 1.11-12). These are the first mythicists who believed that Jesus never existed! There’s a great deal of Biblical evidence that supports this view. This early Christian view called “Docetism” (derived from the Greek term “Dokesis,” meaning “to seem”)——which held that Christ did not really exist in human form, an idea that was later picked up by Islam——attracted some of the greatest Biblical thinkers of Antiquity:
“According to Photius [a 9th century Byzantine Patriarch], Clement of Alexandria held at least a quasi-docetic belief regarding the nature of Christ, namely that the Word/Logos did not became flesh, but only ‘appeared to be in flesh,’ an interpretation which directly denied the reality of the incarnation” (Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. “Clement of Alexandria on Trial: The Evidence of ‘Heresy’ from Photius’ Bibliotheca.” [Leiden: Brill, 2010], p. 95).
As would be expected, Docetism was eventually rejected as a heretical doctrine at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. But this verdict was issued in the 4th century. And there is a very good reason why mythicism had thitherto been on the upswing. In fact, despite this setback, the hermeneutical doctrine that gave rise to Docetism continued to hold sway over most of the church until the Reformation.
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The Monophysite Christian church
According to tradition, the Coptic Church of Egypt was founded by Mark the evangelist in the first century CE. Due to a Christological dispute, this “Monophysite” Christian church was condemned as heretical by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE. Instead of accepting the doctrine that Christ was fully human and fully divine, the Coptic church asserted that Christ had only one nature, and that nature was divine. In other words, just like the Docetists they denied the incarnation and therefore they can be technically defined as mythicists! A similar monophysite explanation of how the divine and human relate within the person of Jesus is Eutychianism. Eutychians were often classified as Phantasiasts by their opponents because they reduced Jesus’ incarnation to a phantasm or an illusion of some kind. Their Christology was along the lines of Docetism in that they, too, denied the full reality of Jesus’ humanity. Thus, we find that there were quite a number of sects that denied the historicity of Jesus during the early period of the church. Things started to change with the onset of the first ecumenical councils!
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The Alexandrian School
The early Christian church held to an allegorical (theological) Interpretation of the Bible, not a historical one. Philo’s essential approach to Biblical interpretation influenced the Christian School of hermeneutics, which also developed in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. One of its principal leaders was the Great Bible scholar, Clement of Alexandria (150-215 CE), who while acknowledging that the Bible contained various levels of meaning also realized that the non-literal (i.e. the allegorical/mystical) interpretations contained the ideal spiritual insights. Alexandrian hermeneutics were so popular that they eventually became the dominant force in Biblical interpretation up until the time of the Protestant Reformation. So, the allegorical/theological Biblical interpretation that gave rise to such views as Docetism was the mainstay of early Biblical scholarship. This method was obviously more inclined towards the spiritual, the metaphorical, and the metaphysical, dare I say the Gnostic!
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The School of Antioch
Sometime towards the end of the 3rd century CE, the School of Antioch was founded. It was the first Seminary, so to speak, founded in Syria that overemphasized the literal interpretation of the Bible and the humanity of Christ. This so-called “exegetical school” interpreted Scripture primarily according to its historical and grammatical sense. In an attempt to offset the earlier excesses of Biblical interpretation that could lead to various questionable doctrines, such as those of Docetism, the Antioch school became increasingly dogmatic and heavily involved in overemphasizing the literal interpretation of the Bible and the full humanity of Jesus. This led to the so-called “Nestorian Heresy,” namely that Jesus possessed two hypostases, one human and one divine! As a result of the condemnation of Nestorius (386 – 450 CE) at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, the Antioch school’s influence declined considerably and never really recovered. Many followers abandoned the school and it eventually moved to another location further East in Persia. Even though the Antiochian school’s tenets had lost traction, they were eventually taken up again by Martin Luther and John Calvin, who restored them to their former glory.
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Conclusion
So, the earlier Alexandrian School of allegorical interpretation at least allowed the possibility of mythicism to be considered as a viable option, whereas the later Antiochian school of literal interpretation——which influenced not only “the dogma of Christ” in the early ecumenical councils, but also modern Bible scholarship——eventually became the dominant school of hermeneutics that held to a rigid form of literalism and overemphasized the historicity of Jesus. In other words, the early church was not as adamant about the historicity of Jesus as the later Church! Thus, up until the end of the third century (the Ante-Nicene Era), and just prior to the onset of the first ecumenical council, the allegorical/metaphorical Jesus dominated the Biblical landscape. It was not until much later that the literal, historical interpretation of Jesus became the prevalent view that it is today!
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Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?”: A Critical Review by Author Eli Kittim
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Unfortunately, my version does not have numbered pages, nevertheless the quotes are taken directly from his book, word for word!
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“Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth is a 2012 book by Bart D. Ehrman, a scholar of the New Testament. In the book, written to counter the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus of Nazareth at all, Ehrman sets out to demonstrate the historical evidence for Jesus' existence, and he aims to state why all experts in the area agree that ‘whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist’ “ (Did Jesus Exist? [Ehrman book] -Wiki).
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1 Bart Ehrman is not only dead wrong but also disingenuous. He writes: “The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus.” That is completely bogus! It’s an idea that was held as early as the second century CE, and it was known as Docetism. This was the notion that Jesus did not have a physical body: that he did not come in the flesh!
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2 Ehrman’s defense of Jesus’ existence is based on presuppositions and circular thinking. He presupposes that certain literary characters are *obviously* historical figures who must have known Jesus. But this is arguing in a circle because he doesn’t prove their historical existence beyond the literary narrative. On the contrary, we have every reason to believe that these are fictional characters that are employed in works of *historical fiction* as, for example, when we are told that Paul the Pharisee is working for the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple who’s a Sadducee, which seems like a total fabrication since Pharisees and Sadducees were bitter rivals.
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3 Moreover, the gospels were written in Greek, and most scholars assume that their sources were also in Greek. The writers are almost certainly non-Jews who are copying and quoting extensively from the Greek Old Testament, not the Jewish Bible. They obviously don’t seem to have a command of the Hebrew language, otherwise they would have written their gospels in Hebrew. And most of them, if not all of them, are writing from outside Palestine. By contrast, the presuppositions Ehrman is making do not square well with the available evidence. He’s arguing that Jesus was an Aramaic peasant from the backwaters of Galilee who had 12 Aramaic disciples who were also peasants. He also contends that the oral traditions or the first stories about Jesus began to circulate shortly after his death, and these oral traditions were, according to Ehrman, obviously in Aramaic.
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4 But here’s the question. If a real historical figure named Jesus existed in a particular geographical location, which has its own unique language and culture, how does the story about him suddenly get transformed and disseminated in an entirely different language within less than 20 years after his purported death?
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5 Furthermore, who are these sophisticated “Greeks” who own the rights to the story, as it were, and who pop out of nowhere, circulating the story as if it’s their own, and what is their particular relationship to this Aramaic community? Where did they come from? And what happened to the Aramaic community and their oral traditions? It suddenly disappeared? Given these inconsistencies, why should we even accept that there were Aramaic oral traditions? If the Aramaic community did not exist, neither did their Aramaic character! That’s the point.
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6 Besides, if Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews who studied at the feet of Gamaliel, surely we would expect him to be steeped in the Hebrew language. Yet, even Paul is writing in sophisticated Greek and quoting extensively not from the Hebrew Bible (which we would expect) but from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. Now that doesn’t make any sense at all! All of a sudden, Paul’s literary identity becomes suspect. Since Paul’s community represents the earliest Christian community that we know of, and since his letters are the earliest known writings about Jesus, we can safely say that the earliest dissemination of the Jesus story comes not from Aramaic but from Greek sources!
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7 What is more, independent attestation does not necessarily prove the historicity of the story, only its popularity. For example, if Dan Brown writes a piercing novel that captures the popular imagination, just because other writers copy the story and begin to give it their own unique expression doesn’t mean that the story in and of itself is based on historical fact. The same principle should hold true with the New Testament gospels that were widely copied by noncanonical works, and which were not in themselves historically-reliable accounts to begin with.
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8 All other mentions, from the second to the fourth centuries, seem irrelevant not only because of their lack of proximity to the purported events (being based neither on eyewitnesses nor firsthand accounts), but also because of inaccurate information. For example, consider Eusebius’ criticism of Papias, who claimed that Matthew wrote in Hebrew (an assertion that has been dismissed by scholars). Or how about Papias’ so-called “sources of knowledge about Jesus” in which he mentions some of the latter’s important disciples in order to impress his audience (a claim that seems highly unlikely because the original apostles would not have been around by then). These tales, of course, play right into Eusebius’ playbook of creating fictional accounts that lead back to the so-called “original” apostles and to the alleged historical Jesus. However, we’re simply reading Papias through Eusebius’ lens. Let’s not forget that Eusebius himself had created so many fables and legends about the martyrs and apostles, and had been criticised as historically unreliable and biased, not to mention that he was too-far removed from the purported events, writing in the 4th century of the Common Era.
It’s unfortunate that Ehrman has to resort to such types of “evidence” to try to defend Jesus’ historicity. It would be quite gullible for any scholar to simply accept Eusebius’ account of Papias at face value.
According to the Jesus Seminar, which comprised a large group of approximately 50 critical biblical scholars, we don’t really know what Jesus said. Why would someone from one century later (like Papias) know what Jesus said? Then why doesn’t he also tell us what Jesus looked like? Or what language he spoke? Why didn’t the companions of the apostles not disclose this information to him?
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9 Then Ehrman quotes a devotional homily written by Ignatius of Antioch, which is probably inspired by the gospels and therefore has no historical value whatsoever, and concludes: “Ignatius, then, provides us yet with another independent witness to the life of Jesus.”
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10 Ehrman aims to prove the historical Jesus by referencing 1 Clement. But how does 1 Clement prove the historicity of Jesus? How can a letter from Rome, composed more than 60 years after Jesus’ purported death, demonstrate Jesus’ actual existence? Once again, we have a devotional piece based possibly on some type of “Scripture.” But in the absence of hard evidence and eyewitness testimony, 1 Clement is useless as evidence for the historical Jesus. Yet Ehrman writes:
“Here again we have an independent witness not just to the life of Jesus as a historical figure but to some of his teachings and deeds. Like all sources that mention Jesus from outside the New Testament, the author of 1 Clement had no doubt about his real existence and no reason to defend it.”
With all due respect, that’s a lame statement and there’s no excuse for a scholar of such caliber to be making these types of blunders.
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11 Ehrman then employs a speech from the Book of Acts:
“Men of Israel, hear these Words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God through miracles and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, just as you know, this one was handed over through the hand of the lawless by the appointed will and foreknowledge of God, and you nailed him up and killed him; but God raised him by loosing the birth pangs of death” (2:22–24).
Question: according to this passage, how was Jesus handed over to them for crucifixion? Answer: “by the appointed will and foreknowledge (προγνώσει) of God.” In other words, the passage seems to indicate that it’s a prophecy that hasn’t happened yet.
Besides, we don’t even know if these speeches in Acts are made-up stories or if they coincide with actual reality, especially since 2 Tim. 2.17-18 argues that the resurrection hasn’t happened yet. Similarly, 2 Thess. 2.1-3 argues that Jesus hasn’t come yet.
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12 Dr. Ehrman then quotes from 1 Peter:
“For you were called to this end, because Christ suffered for you, leaving an example for you that you might follow in his steps, who did not commit sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, who when reviled did not revile in return, while suffering uttered no threat, but trusted the one who judges righteously, who bore our sins in his body on the tree, in order that dying to sin we might live to righteousness, for by his wounds we were healed” (2:21–24).
And yet if you read 1 Peter 1.20 in the original Greek there is absolutely no way that Jesus could have existed in Antiquity:
“He was marked out before the world was made, and was revealed at the final point of time” (NJB).
Similarly, 1 Jn 2.28 places the “revelation” of Christ in eschatological categories:
“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he is revealed [φανερωθῇ] we may have confidence and not be put to shame before him at his coming.”
By the way, to be “revealed” means for the first time; it’s a first-time disclosure (for further details see my article: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/187927555567/why-does-the-new-testament-refer-to-christs
That’s why, according to Lk 17.30, the Son of Man has not yet been revealed:
“it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.”
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13 Then Ehrman quotes 2 Peter:
“For not by following sophistic myths have we made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of the majesty of that one. For when we received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was brought to him by the magnificent glory, ‘this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ we heard this voice that was brought from heaven to him, for we were on the holy mountain” (1:16–18).
What Ehrman fails to tell you is that the following verse, 2 Pet. 1.19, indicates that these were not historical events but rather experiences of visions and auditions that pointed to a future-eschatological prophecy:
“So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed.”
Then Ehrman goes on to say that “Even the book of Revelation, with all its bizarre imagery and fantastic apocalyptic views, understands that Jesus was a real historical figure. For this author he was one who ‘lived’ and who ‘died’ (1:18).” Yet Ehrman fails to mention that in the Book of Revelation Jesus is said to be born in the end-times, as a contemporary of the final empire on earth which is depicted as a seven-headed dragon with ten horns (Rev. 12.1-5). Moreover, the testimony to Jesus in the Book of Revelation is said to be prophetic, not historical! Compare Rev. 19.10d:
“For the testimony [to] Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (NRSV).
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14 Ehrman then quotes from the Book of Hebrews:
“Jesus appeared in ‘these last days’ (1:2).”
But that is an incorrect interpretation. The Greek implies that Jesus’ appearance takes place ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν (in the last days), not in Antiquity.
More explicit and quite unambiguous is Hebrews 9.26b:
“he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Studies in Greek reveal that the phrase “at the end of the age” always refers to the future-eschatological time of the end (cf. Dan. 12.4 LXX; Mt. 13.39-40, 49; Mt. 24.3; Mt. 28.20). Once again, all these verses are indicating a prophecy, not a historical event from the past. In particular, Hebrews 9.26b explicitly states that Jesus will die for the redemption of sins “at the end of the age,” or “in the end of the world” (KJV)!
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15 At this point of the discussion, Dr. Ehrman sets out to demonstrate Paul’s testimony to Jesus:
“The reality is that, convenient or not, Paul speaks about Jesus, assumes that he really lived, that he was a Jewish teacher, and that he died by crucifixion. The following are the major things that Paul says about the life of Jesus. First, Paul indicates unequivocally that Jesus really was born, as a human, and that in his human existence he was a Jew. This he states in Galatians 4:4: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his son, born from a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law….”
The problem is that Ehrman doesn’t understand Greek, nor is he a trained exegete, so he misses the point entirely!
In fact, according to Gal. 4.4 and Eph. 1.9-10, Jesus will be incarnated in “the fullness of time”, or at the end of the age! The Greek phrase τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου (the fullness of time) means when time reached its fullness or completion. And Eph. 1.9-10 clearly demonstrates that it refers to the end-times and the final consummation!
Then Ehrman goes on to talk about the brothers and sisters of the Lord in order to show that Jesus was a real historical person who was surrounded by siblings. However, this proves nothing, not only because these may simply be literary stories that meet the authors’ objectives but also because it can be shown that these are not actual biological blood-relatives of Jesus (see my article: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/611675702018883584/was-james-the-brother-of-jesus-given-that
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16 After this, Ehrman mentions the resurrection and tries to show that “after Jesus was raised on the third day, ‘he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve’ (1 Corinthians 15:5).” But what Ehrman doesn’t tell you is that these were visions of a prophecy that would take place at the end of the age! In Acts 10.40-41 we are told that Jesus’ resurrection is only visible “to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God” (προκεχειροτονημένοις; NASB). Nor does Ehrman tell you that Paul uses the word “eschaton,” which is a reference to the “last days,” as if he were talking about a prophecy. At any rate, Paul says ἔσχατον δὲ πάντων which could be translated “last then of all” or “at the end of all” “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:8). But the way Paul explains it, his use of the word καμοί (also to me) connotes “in the same way or manner,” which lends credence to the idea that Christ had appeared to him as he had to others: that is to say, by way of visions (cf. Gal. 1.15-16; Acts 9.3-5).
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17 Ehrman concludes:
“Finally, Paul is quite emphatic throughout his writings that Jesus was crucified. He never mentions Pontius Pilate or the Romans, but he may have had no need to do so.”
But again, as we will see, there are 2 things to consider, here. First, Paul is not referring to a historical event but to a tradition (to a prophecy) that was handed down to him and which he in turn delivered on to us (the readers/believers). Second, a close reading reveals that Christ didn’t die according to the historical record but rather “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” This is a crucial point. Jesus did not die a historical death, according to past history; rather he died κατὰ τὰς γραφάς, according to the *prophetic writings* that were handed down to Paul:
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.3-4).
And it is for this reason that Paul “never mentions Pontius Pilate or the Romans,” precisely because they’re irrelevant to the *prophetic writings*!
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18 Finally, it doesn’t really matter how many sayings of Jesus Paul (or anyone else) reiterates because they’re irrelevant in proving Jesus’ historicity. Why? Because Paul claims that his gospel is not of human origin: “I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1.12). The point is that all these sayings of Jesus may have come by way of revelation and not from a historical Jesus!
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Conclusion
Ehrman should know better. There were quite a few early-Christian, Gnostic sects that held to a Docetic belief, namely that Jesus did not exist in physical form. This idea was certainly not invented in the 18th century.
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Ehrman also misinterprets certain clearly fictional characters as if they were historical figures, and therefore confuses historical fiction with biography (cf. Acts 9.1-2). Here’s a case in point. Besides the fact that the High priest of the Jerusalem Temple was a Sadducee, who wouldn’t be normally working with a Pharisee, he had absolutely no jurisdiction in Damascus. So what’s Paul doing there persecuting Christians? This is odd because the Christians were hardly a threat compared to the Romans at that point in time. So what’s Paul doing chasing them all the way to Syria? Nothing in the story seems historically accurate or probable. In fact, all the elements of this story spell *fiction,* not fact!
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And why are the earliest New Testament writings in Greek? That certainly would challenge the Aramaic hypothesis. How did the Aramaic oral tradition suddenly become a Greek tradition within less than 20 years after Jesus’ supposed death? That kind of thing just doesn’t happen over night. It’s inexplicable, to say the least.
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Moreover, who are these “Greeks” who took over the story from the earliest days? And what happened to the alleged Aramaic community? Did it suddenly vanish, leaving no traces behind? It might be akin to the Johannine community that never existed, according to Dr. Hugo Mendez. It sounds more like a conspiracy of sorts.
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And if Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews who studied under Gamaliel, what is he doing quoting from the Greek Old Testament? Why are his epistles not in Aramaic or Hebrew? By the way, these are the earliest writings on Christianity that we have. They’re written roughly two decades or less after Christ’s alleged death. Which Aramaic sources are they based on? And if so, why the need to quote the Septuagint? Or to record his letters in Greek? The Aramaic hypothesis doesn’t hold up.
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Finally, the quite obvious interpolations in the works of Josephus and Tacitus are conceded by many Biblical scholars. Many works were actually collaborations rather than corroborations. For example, Pliny the Younger corresponded with Tacitus, demonstrating that their accounts cannot be deemed as independent attestations. And the various non-canonical offshoots can not be used as evidence to prove historicity but rather how *popular* a story was. The various legendary elements were seemingly fused with historical figures and geographical locations to give the writings a sense of verisimilitude, as any good fictional story should do. Dan Brown is a master novelist who always adds such historical elements to his stories. Similarly, it would be stretching credulity to take these clearly fictional and non-canonical stories——whose authorship, production, and dissemination is itself dubious——and turn them into historiographical facts.
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And I hardly fit the mould of those mythicists to whom Ehrman’s criticism is directed:
“Ehrman says that they do not define what they mean by ‘myth’ and maintains they are really motivated by a desire to denounce religion rather than examine historical evidence” (Did Jesus Exist? [Ehrman book] - Wiki).
First, I am not a mythicist; I’m an ahistoricist. That is to say, I do not believe that the story of Jesus is a *myth.* I believe it is a *prophecy* (cf. Heb. 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.20; Rev. 19.10d)!
In other words, I don’t believe that the story of Jesus is a “mythological” motif, based on preexisting pagan myths, or that he never existed and never will. Rather, I believe that the New Testament evidence supports the notion that the Jesus-story is based on “revelations” (Gal. 1.11-12) and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Pet. 1.19-21; Rev. 22.18-19).
Second, I am not “really motivated by a desire to denounce religion rather than examine historical evidence.” On the contrary, I have a high Christology and hold to a high view of Scripture. So, I don’t have an axe to grind. I actually believe in Christ, and I also believe that the Bible is the word of God. I’m just able to look at all the facts dispassionately, without any biases or presuppositions, and follow the facts wherever they may lead.
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All in all, I find Ehrman’s defence rather weak, and his arguments quite ineffective. In fact, the lack of archeological and interdisciplinary evidence for the existence of Jesus, coupled with the lack of eyewitness reports and firsthand accounts, seems to point in the opposite direction than Ehrman would have us believe. Not to mention that he seems to be unfamiliar with Koine Greek, ultimately mistranslating and misinterpreting the text!
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I’ll close with the words of a world-class Bible scholar and highly respected textual critic. Kurt Aland——who’s a world-renowned textual scholar, having founded and directed the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, and who was one of the chief editors of the Nestle-Aland - Novum Testamentum Graece (the critical edition of the New Testament)——went so far as to question the historicity of Jesus:
“If the . . . epistles were really written by the apostles whose names they bear, and by people who were closest to Jesus . . . then the real question arises . . . was there really a Jesus?” “Can Jesus really have lived if the writings of his closest companions are filled with so little of his reality . . . so little in them of the reality of the historical Jesus . . .” “When we observe this——assuming that the writings about which we are speaking really come from their alleged authors——it almost then appears as if Jesus were a mere PHANTOM. . .“
(“A History of Christianity,” Vol 1, by Kurt Aland, p. 106 - emphasis added).
Is the Old Testament Inspired?: The Case Against Marcion
By Award-Winning Author Eli Kittim
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Is the Old Testament Uninspired Because it Doesn’t Mention Jesus?
Marcion of Sinope (ca. 85 – 160 CE) preached that Jesus’ teachings, especially those on love, were completely at odds with the Old Testament (OT) revelations regarding the God of the Jews, whom he saw as legalistic and punitive, with no connection at all to the essential message of the New Testament (NT). One key Marcionite objection to the authority of the Jewish Bible is that the name of Jesus is never once mentioned there. However, the exclusivity of Jesus in the NT does not preclude the inspiration of the Hebrew Bible. The notion that the father cannot be known apart from Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with the question of the OT’s canonicity. For example, Acts 4.12 says:
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is
no other name under heaven given to
mankind by which we must be saved.
The fact that the name of Jesus is not found in the OT has no bearing on whether this collection of ancient Hebrew writings is inspired or not. After all, the name of Jesus (Ιησοῦς) is found in the Septuagint’s Book of Joshua, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible: https://www.academic-bible.com/en/online-bibles/septuagint-lxx/read-the-bible-text/bibel/text/lesen/?tx_buhbibelmodul_bibletext%5Bscripture%5D=Joshua+4
At any rate, these are two fundamentally different questions. The former has to do with Christology (i.e. the study of Christ), whereas the latter has to do with Biblical theology (i.e. the study of the Bible)!
The former has to to do with “Theology proper,” that is to say, with the exclusivity of Jesus as the unique preexistent Word of God (the Logos) through whom “All things came into being” (John 1.1-4), or as the “only begotten Son” (1 John 4.9) who prior to his incarnation “was in the form of God” (Phil. 2.6). Marcionites will therefore argue that Christ is the *only one* who is capable of revealing the Father, given that “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1.15) “through whom he [the Father] also created the worlds” (Heb. 1.1-2). For example, John 14.6 reads:
Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.’
But this declaration is not a proof-text demonstrating that the OT is not authoritative simply because it doesn’t mention Jesus’ divinity. That has to do with progressive revelation, the idea that revelation is given a little at a time.
Holding to a high Christology has little to do with whether or not the Hebrew Bible is inspired. That’s an entirely different issue involving Biblical theology, Pneumatology, and the like. So, the fact that Jesus is not mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible is not a sufficient reason to dismiss this collection of Books as uninspired.
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Is the OT Uncanonical?
If the OT is not authoritative, as some Marcionites have argued, then why would the NT writers quote extensively from an “uninspired” book? And what would be the purpose of the standard *Biblical canon* if the NT authors extensively quoted from so-called “uninspired” books? In other words, if the OT is not authoritative, it would *contradict* the “canon of scripture” principle in which only Biblically-inspired books are accepted into the canon. Not to mention that the OT is widely viewed as authoritative by the NT precisely because it is included as a source of prophetic predictions in many different places, notably in Matthew 24, and especially in the Book of Revelation!
As a matter of fact, the NT authors insist that the OT is inspired! For example, at the time of the composition of the second letter to Timothy, there was no NT Scripture as yet. So, when the Biblical writers referred to Scripture, with the exception of two instances——namely, 2 Pet. 3.16, wherein Paul’s letters are referred to as “Scripture,” and 1 Tim. 5.18, in which Luke’s gospel is referred to as “Scripture”——they always meant the Hebrew Bible. The proof that they considered the Hebrew Bible to be *inspired* is in Second Timothy 3.16, which reads:
All scripture is inspired [πᾶσα γραφὴ
Θεόπνευστος] by God and is useful for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness.
——-
Does Intertextuality Prove that the OT is Inspired?
All the books of the NT are constantly borrowing and quoting extensively from the OT, a “Book” without which the NT would be lacking a foundation. If we were to remove all those OT quotations, the NT would be insupportable, not to mention incomprehensible!
So, whoever thinks that the OT is uncanonical and uninspired is clearly not familiar with the heavy literary dependence of the NT on the OT (i.e. a process known as “intertextuality”). If you were to open up a critical edition of the NT, you’d be astounded by how much of the OT is actually quoted in the NT. Prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Daniel abound all over the place. The Book of Revelation, in particular, is mostly based on a reorganization of OT prophetic material from Zechariah, Joel, Amos, Daniel, and many others. A brief look at a *Chain-Reference-Bible* would quickly illustrate this fact: https://archive.org/details/ThompsonChainReferenceBible/page/n47/mode/2up
So, the proposal to remove this material——-suggested by Marcion of Sinope and, to a lesser extent, by some modern day preachers and closet Marcionites, such as Andy Stanley——is rather absurd as the NT would be without any foundation or justification concerning messianic, eschatological, or prophetic terminology. For example, various questions would inevitably arise: Where did the NT get the idea of the day of the Lord? Or the idea of the resurrection of the dead? Or that of the great tribulation? Or the concept of the Antichrist? Or the notion of the Messiah? All these concepts are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible!
If the OT is not authoritative, then the verbal agreements between the OT and the NT would equally disqualify those same statements as inauthentic NT references. For example, Paul quotes Isaiah verbatim. Many of the Jesus sayings are from the OT. If, say, a Marcionite were to claim that the OT is not inspired, then he would have to concede that some of Paul’s and Jesus’ sayings are equally uninspired, since they are derived from the OT. In other words, unbeknownst to the Marcionites, in rejecting the OT, they would also be rejecting the NT as well!
For example, most of the Matthew-24 prophetic material is based on the OT: from the abomination of desolation (Mt. 24.15; cf. Dan. 9.27) to the time when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light” (Mt.24.29; cf. Joel 3:15). If these OT prophecies were not inspired or authoritative, then they would certainly not have been used in the NT prophetic literature!
The explicit approval of OT passages as authoritative by the NT writers, and especially by Paul and Jesus——as well as the explicit message that “All scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3.16), which obviously includes the OT, given that It has been heavily employed in the NT——argues for the inspiration of the OT!
——-
As for Marcionism, it really involves a syncretism of Christianity and Gnosticism, with all the extra-biblical distortions that this fusion entails, such as the assumed existence of two deities (a lesser and a higher one), and the evil inherent in the material world. These are two diametrically opposed belief-systems between the monotheism of the NT and the polytheism of the Gnostics!
——-
Conclusion
Thus, Marcion, who was an anti-Semite, not only rejected Yahweh as a lesser, evil god, but he went on to dismiss the entire OT as if it were completely uninspired. He felt that it lacked the extravagant love story of the NT, which was ultimately derived from the Supreme God and father of Jesus Christ. He thought that these two testaments pertained to two fundamentally different gods. And so he urged Christians to steer clear of the OT because he considered it to be the product of an inferior deity. However, this is not the view of the NT authors, nor is it part of mainstream NT theology, soteriology, ecclesiology, or eschatology.
What is more, Marcion obviously did not critically assess both testaments to fully explore the extent to which *intertextuality* was involved within these manuscripts (i.e. the literary dependence of one testament on the other) and how inextricably linked they really were! Therefore, a rejection of the entire OT is simultaneously a rejection of many portions of the NT, including many of Jesus’ sayings. Such a separation would render the NT completely useless both theologically and Christologically, if not also eschatologically. Marcion’s claims would therefore undermine Christianity’s overall integrity, and this is probably why Marcion was denounced as a heretic and was excommunicated by the church of Rome ca. 144 CE.
To be fair, Marcion had the right idea, but the wrong approach. It’s true that there’s a radical shift in the NT from an active obedience to the 10-commandments to a passive acceptance of God’s Grace; from an external circumcision of the flesh to an internal circumcision of the heart (and the consequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit). Contrary to the Aleph and Tav in the Hebrew Scriptures, we are suddenly introduced to the NT revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega (using the first and last letters of the Greek rather than the Hebrew alphabet). After all, the NT is written exclusively in Greek, by Greeks, and written predominantly to Greek communities within the Roman empire. Paul himself maintains that we are “justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law” (e.g. Gal. 2.16). So, there is very little here that is Jewish!
But although the NT is a uniquely Greek “Book,” in which the name of Yahweh is never once mentioned, nevertheless the Hebrew Bible is still its foundation, without which the former would lose not only its historical lineage and theological context but also its reliability, validity, and, ultimately, its credibility!
When, Where, and By Whom Was Each Book of the New Testament Written?
By Writer Eli Kittim
——-
The New Testament: Book by Book
Matthew.
Place Written: Antioch?
Written in 80-85 CE.
Author: anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Matthew, the tax collector disciple of Jesus. An account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that stresses he is the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures.
Mark.
Place Written: Rome?
Written in 70 CE.
Author: anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Mark, the personal secretary of the apostle Peter. The earliest record of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, which portrays him as the messiah no one expected or understood, who was sent to die for the sins of the world and be raised from the dead.
Luke.
Place Written: Antioch.
Written in 80-85 CE.
Author: anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Luke, a traveling companion of Paul. An account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that stresses he was the final prophet sent from God, destined to be rejected by his own people so salvation would go to gentiles.
John.
Place Written: Ephesus?
Written in 90-95 CE.
Author: anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Jesus’ disciple John the Son of Zebedee. An account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection focusing on his identity as a pre-existent divine being sent from above to bring eternal life to all who believe in him.
Acts.
Place Written: Rome.
Written in 85-90 CE.
Author: anonymous: same author as Gospel of Luke. An account of the miraculous spread of the Christian church after Jesus’ resurrection, through the preaching and miracles of the apostles, especially Paul, who took the message to gentiles.
Romans.
Place Written: Corinth.
Written 60-64 CE.
Author: Paul. Written to the Christian church of Rome to explain the essentials of Paul’s gospel message, that only the death of Jesus can bring salvation from sin, for both Jews and gentiles.
1 Corinthians.
Place Written: Macedonia.
Written: mid 50s CE.
Author: Paul. Written to the church in Corinth, in response to numerous problems experienced after Paul’s departure, including divisions in the church, sexual immorality, proper worship, and the reality of the future resurrection.
2 Corinthians.
Place Written: Macedonia.
Written: mid 50s CE.
Author: Paul. Follow-up letter to 1 Corinthians, which attacks “super-apostles” who claim precedence over Paul and explains that followers of Jesus in this age will experience hardship rather than glory.
Galatians.
Place Written: Corinth.
Written: late 50s CE.
Author: Paul. Written with urgency to gentile churches throughout region of Galatia to attack those arguing that gentile Christians must adopt the ways of Judaism, especially circumcision.
Ephesians.
Place Written: Rome.
Written: end of first century.
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. Letter to church of Ephesus, giving a plea for the unity provided by Christ and the free salvation he provides, to a church experiencing splits between Jewish and gentile factions.
Philippians.
Place Written: Rome/Ephesus?
Written: late 50s CE.
Author: Paul. Joyful letter thanking the church in Philippi for its moral and material support and urging church unity among members who should live for others in imitation of Christ.
Colossians.
Place Written: Rome/Ephesus?
Written: end of first century.
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. Letter urging Christians in Colossae not to worship spiritual powers other than Christ, who alone provides all that is needed for salvation and spiritual completion.
1 Thessalonians.
Place Written: Corinth.
Written: 49-50 CE.
Author: Paul. Paul’s earliest letter. A joyful recollection of his time with the church, stressing the imminent arrival of Christ from heaven and the salvation he will then bring, even to believers who had already died.
2 Thessalonians.
Place Written: Corinth.
Written: ca 70s CE?
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. Written in imitation of 1 Thessalonians, an appeal to Christians not to think the return of Christ is immediate. The end is coming, but it will be preceded by clear signs.
1 Timothy.
Place Written: Macedonia.
Written: end of first century.
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. Allegedly written to Paul’s young follower Timothy, pastor of church in Ephesus, giving instructions about how to organize and run his church.
2 Timothy.
Place Written: Rome.
Written: end of first century.
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. By the same author as 1 Timothy and Titus, also addressed to Timothy, giving Paul’s final thoughts and instructions as he is preparing soon to die.
Titus.
Place Written: Macedonia?
Written: end of first century.
Author: unknown, in the name of Paul. By the same author as 1 and 2 Timothy. Addressed to Paul’s follower Titus, pastor of church on Cyprus, giving instructions about how to organize and run his church.
Philemon.
Place Written: Rome.
Written: late 50s CE.
Author: Paul. Letter written to a wealthy Christian, Philemon, urging him to receive back and forgive his slave Onesimus, who had absconded with his property and fled to Paul for help.
Hebrews.
Place Written: Rome?
Written: end of first century.
Author: Anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Paul. A plea to readers not to leave the Christian faith for Judaism, since Christ is superior to everything in the Hebrew Bible, which foreshadowed the salvation he would bring.
James.
Place Written: unknown.
Written: end of first century.
Author unknown, in the name of Jesus’ brother James. A moral essay correcting Christians who believed that “faith alone” would save, by stressing the need to do “good works,” since faith without works “is dead.”
1 Peter.
Place Written: Babylon/Rome?
Written: end of first century.
Author unknown: in the name of Jesus’ disciple Peter. A letter encouraging Christians experiencing suffering for their faith, emphasizing that Christ himself suffered, as would all those who strive to be his witnesses in the world.
2 Peter.
Place Written: Rome?
Written: ca. 120 CE.
Author unknown: in the name of Jesus’ disciple Peter. A letter explaining why the “imminent” return of Jesus had not yet happened, assuring its readers that a delay was necessary but all was going according to God’ plan.
1 John.
Place Written: Ephesus?
Written: end of first century.
Author: anonymous; traditionally ascribed to Jesus’ disciple John the Son of Zebedee. An essay written to urge followers of Jesus to be fulling loving to one another and not to be led astray by a separatist faction that suggested Jesus was a phantasmal being and not fully human.
2 John.
Place Written: Ephesus?
Written: end of first century.
Author anonymous; same author as 1 John; traditionally ascribed to Jesus’ disciple John the Son of Zebedee. Brief letter addressing a church leader’s community urging unity in love and the avoidance of false teaching.
3 John.
Place Written: Ephesus?
Written: end of first century.
Author anonymous; same author as 1 John; traditionally ascribed to Jesus’ disciple John the Son of Zebedee. Very brief letter addressing similar issues of 2 John in light of a specific problem, the reception of a visiting church leader who was rejected by some in the congregation.
Jude.
Place Written: Unknown.
Written: end of first century.
Author anonymous; in the name of Jude, the brother of Jesus. Brief and vitriolic letter attacking false teachers who had infiltrated the Christian community, without indicating the nature of their teaching.
Revelation.
Place Written: Patmos Island.
Written 90-95 CE.
Author: an unknown John; traditionally ascribed to Jesus’ disciple, John the Son of Zebedee. A description of mysterious visions of the heavenly realm and the cataclysmic disasters to strike the earth before all God’s enemies are destroyed and a new utopian world arrives for the followers of Christ.
Source credit: Bart D. Ehrman (edited)
——-
Conclusion
Most of the New Testament Books were written in Greece: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Titus, the Book of Revelation, and possibly others as well! Astoundingly, not a single New Testament Book was ever written in Palestine by a Jew! Not one! Not even the letters of James and Jude. According to scholars, the cultivated Greek language of these epistles could not have possibly been written by Jerusalem Jews! Besides, according to Bart Ehrman, “most of the apostles were illiterate and could not in fact write. They could not have left an authoritative writing if their soul depended on it.”
What is more, there are more Epistles addressed to Greek communities than any other: 1 & 2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians. And most of the New Testament letters are written in Greece. Nine in all! It’s also important to note that when the New Testament authors quote from the Old Testament, they often quote from the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and not from the Hebrew scriptures per se. It’s true that Greek was the lingua franca. But the lingua franca was only used for commerce, not for writing sacred scripture! If the New Testament was written in Greek because it was the lingua franca, then we would expect most of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be written in Greek. But most of them are in Hebrew, thus disproving the lingua franca hypothesis! Devout Jews preferred Hebrew. Besides, the New Testament was supposed to be a continuation of Jewish scripture! This indicates that the New Testament authors were not familiar with the Hebrew language. This lends plausibility to the argument that the New Testament authors were not Hebrews, but Greeks! For example, it could be argued that the “New Perspective on Paul” needs to be revisited, given Paul’s polemic against the Judaizers, his extraordinary command of the Greek language, his extensive quotations from the Greek rather than from the Hebrew Bible, as well as the puzzling discrepancies regarding his supposed Jewish identity (cf. Rom. 2.28-29; 1 Cor. 9.20)!
To sum up, most of the New Testament Books were composed in Greece. Most of the epistles were penned in Greece and addressed to Greek communities. The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek, outside of Palestine, by non-Jews who used the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Bible when quoting from the Old Testament. It seems, then, that the New Testament is an entirely sui generis Greek Book, which was largely composed in Greece by Greeks. Thus, the Greek origin of the New Testament speaks volumes about its Hellenistic *messianic* message, ideas, and content!
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Polytheism Versus Monotheism
By Biblical Researcher and Award-Winning Author, Eli Kittim
——-
The First Cause
Some Bible critics have argued that there maybe other gods in the universe. However, the Bible itself claims that there’s only one God. Now, you may see that as circular reasoning but there are also valid philosophical arguments which demonstrate that there can only be one cause to the universe, to wit, a “first cause.” Philosophy does not posit a multiplicity of first causes but rather the existence of a single, first cause, just as other theosophical and spiritual traditions have also posited a single incorporeal first cause. Let’s not forget that we’re not talking about a genus, a multiplicity of “contingent” beings, but about the source of everything, a “necessary” being that is beyond time and space and beyond being. If there were two such beings, then neither of them would be god. There can only be one maximally great being that can exist in every possible world.
——-
The Cosmological Argument
Plato (c. 427–347 BCE), in the Timaeus dialogue, posited a "demiurge" of absolute intelligence as the creator of the universe. Plotinus, a 3rd century Neoplatonist philosopher from Alexandria, claimed that the “One” transcendent absolute caused the cosmos to come into being as a result of its existence (creatio ex deo). Proclus (412–485 CE), his disciple, later clarified that “The One is God.”
Similarly, according to Aristotle, the “unmoved mover” (Gk. ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, lit. “that which moves without being moved”) or “prime mover” is the main cause (or first uncaused cause) of all the motion in the cosmos but is not itself moved or caused by any previous action or causation. Notice that the so-called “first cause” arguments do not entail multiplicity or diversity but rather unity and oneness.
In other words, nothing can come into being from nothing. Think about everything you see around you: your house, your car, your phone, your computer, your clothes, your food, your furniture, your TV, your parents, your friends, even yourself. Everything comes from something else. And the further back you go in time, in trying to unravel what caused what, the more you realize that everything came from something else. Someone or something either designed it, produced it, formed it, or gave it birth. If there were 2 gods, we would have to ask who came first? Who brought the second god into being?
However, the cosmological argument necessarily presupposes a single cause, which itself was never caused, namely, a timeless being, capable of creating everything (i.e. all contingent beings). Otherwise, if there was no first “unmoved mover,” there would be an infinite regress of causal dependency ad infinitum. This “first cause” can therefore be inferred via the concept of causation. This is not unlike Leibniz’ “principle of sufficient reason” nor unlike Parmenides’ “nothing comes from nothing” (Gk. οὐδὲν ἐξ οὐδενός; Lat. ex nihilo nihil fit)! All these arguments demonstrate not only that there must be a “necessary” being that designed and sustained the universe, but also that there can only be “one” such being!
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The One God of the Old Testament
Epistemology is a philosophical branch that questions the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge. The possible sources of knowledge that could justify a belief are based on perception, memory, reason, and testimony. Thus, divine revelation, which was subsequently transcribed or inscripturated, would certainly qualify as “testimony.”
There are multiple passages in both Testaments of the Bible where God declares to be without a counterpart: without an equal. Similar to the “Absolute Being” of philosophy which is logically inferred as a single, first cause, the Old Testament clearly affirms the existence of only one God. So, the uniqueness of a single God can also be attested by Divine Revelation. Scripture is therefore a witness to the reality of God’s existence as being unparalleled and unique. For example, in Isaiah 44.6-7 (NRSV), God declares that there are no other gods in the universe except him. He exclaims:
I am the first and I am the last; besides me
there is no god. Who is like me? Let them
proclaim it, let them declare and set it forth
before me.
In Isaiah 42.8, God states that he doesn’t share his glory with anyone. He alone is God without equal or rival:
I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I
give to no other, nor my praise to idols.
Moreover, in Isaiah 43.10-11, God declares categorically and unequivocally that there were no gods formed before him, nor will there be any gods formed after him:
Before me no god was formed, nor shall
there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and
besides me there is no savior.
This truth is reiterated several times in Isaiah 45.18, 21:
For thus says the Lord, who created the
heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth
and made it (he established it; he did not
create it a chaos, he formed it to be
inhabited!): I am the Lord, and there is no
other.
There is no other god besides me, a
righteous God and a Savior; there is no one
besides me.
This assertion, of course, implies that there are not multiple gods that receive many different forms of religious worship but rather a single Godhead sans equal.
In Isaiah 46.9-10, God sets a unique standard against which all other theories are measured, namely, the fulfillment of prophecy. That is to say, no one else can predict the future except God himself:
I am God, and there is no other; I am God,
and there is no one like me, declaring the
end from the beginning and from ancient
times things not yet done.
Similarly, 2 Sam. 7.22 seems to attest to the truth of God’s oneness by way of divine revelation (cf. 2 Pet 1.18):
You are great, O Lord God; for there is no
one like you, and there is no God besides
you, according to all that we have heard
with our ears.
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The One God of the New Testament
When we turn to the Christian scriptures, we find the exact same theme concerning one God who reigns supreme above humanity and the heavenly host. At no point in Scripture is there any hint that there are other gods that exist beside the God of the Old and New Testaments. John 17.3, for instance, brings to bear the authority of Scripture on the matter by calling the source of all creation “the only true God.” Critics of the Trinity (who view it as polytheistic) should be rebuffed because in the Johannine gospel Jesus clearly establishes that there’s *one essence* between himself and God. He proclaims, “The Father and I are one” (10.30).
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one God, but three coeternal, consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit—as "one God in three Divine Persons". The three Persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" (homoousios). Paul the apostle also knows through direct revelations that “God is one” (Rom. 3.30). Paul understands that the Triune God is not equivalent to multiple gods but is rather a *monotheistic supreme deity* (1 Cor. 8.6 emphasis added):
there is ONE GOD, the Father, from whom
are all things and for whom we exist, and
one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are
all things and through whom we exist.
Colossians 1.15-16 explains that no other god or gods created the universe except God the Father (the source) through his Son (who is his image or reflection):
He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation; for in him all
things in heaven and on earth were created,
things visible and invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or rulers or powers—all things
have been created through him and for him.
1 Tim. 2.5 basically reiterates the exact same concept of the ONE GOD, not as 2 or 3 separate beings, but as ONE BEING (in multiple persons):
For there is one God; there is also one
mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human.
Similarly, Hebrews 1.2-3 reveals the exact same *truth* regarding a single God and his Son, “through whom he also created the worlds”:
in these last days he [God] has spoken to
us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all
things, through whom he also created the
worlds. He [Christ] is the reflection of God's
glory and the exact imprint of God's very
being, and he sustains all things by his
powerful word.
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God is Truth & Does Not Lie
The Bible repeatedly reminds us that God is truth, holiness, and veritable love itself, and therefore he does not lie. The Old Testament verifies his truthfulness by instructing us to imitate his holiness. Exodus 20.16 says,
You shall not bear false witness against
your neighbor.
Proverbs 12.22 reads:
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,
but those who act faithfully are his delight.
What is more, there are many Bible passages that demonstrate unlimited confidence in God’s honesty, transparency, and accountability. Titus 1.1-2 (emphasis added) is such a passage:
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of
Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of
God's elect and the knowledge of the truth
that is in accordance with godliness, in the
hope of eternal life that God, WHO NEVER
LIES, promised before the ages began—
In John 17.17 (ESV), Jesus himself says to God the Father:
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is
truth.
This is reminiscent of Isaiah 65.16 (ESV) which calls the creator, “the God of truth.” He is similarly acknowledged in Deuteronomy 32.4 (NKJV) as “A God of truth and without injustice.”
In Numbers 23.19 (NRSV), God is further attested as a higher-being whose good character precludes deception and lies:
God is not a human being, that he should
lie, or a mortal, that he should change his
mind. Has he promised, and will he not do
it?
Moreover, the doctrine of the Immutability of God describes an attribute of God which prevents him from changing his will or character. It implies that He will make good on all of his promises. Hebrews 6:18 (ICB) puts it thusly:
These two things cannot change. God
cannot lie when he makes a promise, and
he cannot lie when he makes an oath.
These things encourage us who came to
God for safety. They give us strength to
hold on to the hope we have been given.
Conclusion
This life has no guarantees. So, from an interdisciplinary perspective, when there are multiple lines of evidence concerning one God——coupled with cases abounding in the “religious-experience literature” down through the ages——the *testimony* becomes rather robust and trustworthy! In other words, the religious testimony is ipso facto a possible source of knowledge. And this global testimony——which goes far beyond the Judeo-Christian Bible and includes other world religions——indicates that only one God exists. If we add the philosophical arguments that also assert a first cause regarding everything that has been created in the cosmos, then we can safely say that there can only be one God that is responsible for creating and sustaining the universe!
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Who Are the Two Witnesses of Revelation?
By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
The Coming Elijah & the Two Witnesses: Symbols of Christ
Let’s start from the beginning so that you could understand how various Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT) passages pertain to this topic. Here’s an excerpt from my book “The Little Book of Revelation,” chapter 1, pp. 60-63:
“. . . there are strong scriptural indications
that ‘Elijah’ prophetically signifies the
forthcoming Messiah. In the last book of
the Jewish scriptures, virtually the last
words of the entire OT are as follows [Mal.
4.5]:
‘Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the
prophet before the coming of the great
and terrible day of the Lord.’ “
“This is probably the single most
perplexing oracle in the Bible because the
only figure who is expected to arrive on
earth during ‘the day of the Lord’ is Jesus
Christ himself [cf. Lk. 17.30; 1 Cor. 1.7; Phil.
1.6; Col. 3.4; 1 Thess. 1.10; 2 Thess. 1.7; 1
Tim. 6.14; 2 Tim. 4.1; Titus 2.13; 1 Pet. 1.13;
5.1; 1 Jn. 2.28; Rev. 1.1]. And he is not only
known as a prophet, he is also known as the
‘Lord’ . . . [Mt. 21.11]. . . . Could it be that
the earlier Elijah narratives, from the
‘books of Kings,’ were prophesying about
the time of the end? Since no ordinary
human is either qualified or prophesied to
accomplish such extraordinary feats, we
are left with only one conclusion: the last
days’ ‘Elijah’ can be none other than the
foretold God-Messiah! In that event, this
oracle regarding Elijah can be viewed as a
subtle allegorical sign of Christ’s
incarnation ‘before the coming of the
great and terrible day of the Lord.’ . . .”
“This type of symbolism is then carried
forward into the book of Revelation where
we find two ‘last days’ witnesses who
prophesy for 1,260 days (Rev. 11.2-13). In
the text, God declares, ‘I will grant
“authority” to my two witnesses’ (Rev.
11.3, emphasis added). But let us back up
for a moment. Was it not Jesus who once
said, ‘All authority has been given to Me in
heaven and on earth’? (Mt. 28.18; cf. Rev.
18.1 . . .). Thus, the biblical jargon is
suggesting an intimate relationship
between these figures and Christ.
Returning to our vignette, the two
witnesses are also capable of performing
astonishing miracles, and just like Moses
and Jesus, they even ‘have power over the
waters to turn them into blood, and to
smite the earth with every plague, as
often as they desire’ (Rev. 11.6; 14.19-20;
19.15; Exod. 7.20). At the end of their
ministry, they are killed in a ‘city which
mystically is called Sodom and Egypt,
where also their Lord was crucified’ (Rev.
11.8). So they prophesy in the same place
where Jesus lived, and they die in the
same city where he died. We think you can
guess the rest of the script: ‘And after . . .
three . . . days the breath of life from God
came into them, and they stood on their
feet [they were resurrected]’ (Rev. 11.11).”
What Exactly Is the Day of Christ?
As I will show later, the two witnesses are symbols of the messiah. But first, in chapter 3, p. 99, of my book I try to explain the pericope of 2 Thess. 2.1-3 (NKJV), where Paul says:
“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering
together to Him, we ask you, not to be
soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by
spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us,
as though the day of Christ had come. Let
no one deceive you by any means; for that
Day will not come unless the falling away
comes first, and the man of sin is
revealed, the son of perdition . . .”
“Before we begin our analysis, it is
imperative that we provide a definition for
what Paul refers to as ‘the day of Christ.’
As the preceding segment maintains, this
unique ‘day’ concerns ‘the coming of our
Lord and our gathering together to him.’
This kind of language is used consistently
throughout scripture (cf. Acts 2.1; Mt. 24.
39-42) to represent the concept of the
‘rapture’: the ascent of the living and the
dead into heaven (1 Cor. 15.51-52; 1
Thess. 4.16-17). Hence, Paul is not simply
indicating the human manifestation of
Jesus on the world scene; rather, he is
emphasizing Christ’s postresurrection
activities that begin to have a real and
substantial impact on life as we know it.
By implication, ‘the day of Christ’
primarily signifies the risen Messiah.”
In fact, 2 Thess. 2.1 uses the exact same word for the rapture that Mt. 24.31 uses, namely, episunagógé. That’s precisely why Christ warns us, in Mt. 24.23-28, not to be overly concerned about the earthly messiah, but rather to focus on the risen messiah who comes like lightning in the sky. Thus, Christ’s earthly manifestation can be deemed to be his “unofficial” appearance, so to speak, whereas his postresurrection parousia is the one that’s scripturally regarded as his official coming. It is the ultimate event to which everything in scripture is pointing!
The Two Witnesses: Symbols of the OT & NT Messiah
In order to understand the identity of the two witnesses (δύο μαρτύρων) in Rev. 11.3-12, we must first trace them back to the Hebrew Bible from which they emerge. According to Judaism, there are two Messiahs: one is a high priest, the other is an anointed king of the Davidic line. This is what Zech. 4.14 is referring to when it says (cf. Rev. 11.4):
“These are the two anointed ones who stand
by the Lord of the whole earth.”
In an academic article (The Doctrine of the Two Messiahs in Sectarian Literature in the Time of the Second Commonwealth, Harvard Theological Review, vol. 52, issue 3, 1959, pp. 149-185), author J. Liver writes:
“The problem of the two Messiahs in
Apocryphal literature, especially in the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and in
the Damascus Covenant, occupied scholars
at the beginning of the present century and
has revealed new facets with the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Especially
pertinent to this problem are some of the
texts from Qumran Cave 1, and some
fragments from Qumran Cave 4, recently
published. We shall here endeavor to make
clear the distinctive features of these
Messiahs, their status and their tasks at the
end of days, and to elucidate the historical
setting from which the doctrine of the two
Messiahs sprang.”
However, in the NT, these 2 Messiahs are morphed into one priestly/kingly figure: Jesus the Son of God (cf. Heb. 4.14 and Mt. 2.1–2). Notice the parallels between Christ and the Two Witnesses. They are killed immediately after their testimony is proclaimed; they are killed in the same place where Jesus died; and just like Christ, they arise from the dead approximately 3 days later!
There are further parallels between Christ (Rev. 12.4--5) and the 2 witnesses (Rev. 11.7--12; cf. Acts 1.9), which are stunningly similar. The mainstream view that the 2 witnesses represent Moses and Elijah (signifying the Law and the Prophets) appears to be inaccurate. According to Heb. 9:27, each person is destined to die once, which would disqualify Moses from a second human birth. As for the purported ascension of Elijah, it seems to be a theological narrative that foreshadows the ascension of Christ.
So when we trace the identity of the two witnesses back to the OT and the context in which they appear, we find that they represent the 2 Messiahs of Rabbinic Judaism. But these 2 figures later became coalesced, commingled into one, in the figure of Jesus Christ, who’s given the titles of king and high priest in the order of Melchizedek, who is also a king and priest (Heb. 7.13-17). Therefore, the 2 witnesses appear to represent the coming Messiah: Jesus Christ!
First Comes Christ; Then Comes the Antichrist
“Keep the commandment . . . until the
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which
He [God] will bring about at the proper
time— . . . whom no man has seen” (1 Tim.
6.14-16).
On the authority of this fascinating passage, we come to realize that Jesus is not revealed according to the pseudohistorical period of the gospel narratives, but instead, he is manifested “at the proper time”: a forthcoming event frequently alluded to by the NT epistles. We know that Christ will initiate the end-time events by being the first major figure to appear on the world stage (i.e. the first horseman of Revelation). We also know that he’s born in the last days during the completion or “fullness of time” (τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου Gal.4.4; Eph. 1.9-10; see also Rev. 12.5; Heb. 1.2; 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.20)! For further details, see my paper “WHO IS THE FIRST HORSEMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE?”: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/168159235542/who-is-the-first-horseman-of-the-apocalypse
According to 2 Thess. 2.1-3, the official coming of Christ & the rapture cannot occur until the revolt takes place and the Antichrist (AC) is revealed. This refers to the AC claiming to be God with signs & wonders (vv. 4, 9). Therefore, the basic sequence is that Christ will appear first, unobserved (Lk 17.20), followed by the apostasy and the AC. Then, and only then, can the “official” postresurrection coming of Christ & the rapture take place.
Revelation 11.4 associates the two witnesses with the 2 lamp stands or 2 messiahs of Hebrew scripture. Verse 2 discusses the abomination of desolation (aka the Great Tribulation or GT) when the nations will trample underfoot the holy city (Jerusalem) for 42 months. Verse 3 says that God will give testimony to his 2 witnesses and they’ll prophesy for 1,260 days dressed in sackcloth (mourning attire). Verse 5 says that they will perform great signs. And whoever tries to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies (cf. 2 Thess. 2.8: “the Lord will slay [him] with the breath of His mouth”). Verse 6 warns that these have great authority (exousian) to control the weather and to cause plagues. Verse 7 is the key. It says that when they complete their witness (testimony), the beast that arises out of the abyss* (AC) will make war with them, defeat them, and kill them (cf. 2 Thess. 2.7; Rev. 12.4b).
Verse 8 reveals that they’ll die in the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also Christ was purportedly crucified. Verse 11 announces that after 3 and a half days the spirit of God will enter them and raise them from the dead. The 3 and a half days appear to symbolize 3 and a half years, according to the day-year principle (see Num. 14.34; Ezek. 4.5–6). So Christ seemingly rises at the end of 3 plus years. Moreover, verse 12 tells us that they hear a loud voice from heaven saying “come up here” (anabēte hōde). And they went up in the cloud. Compare Acts 1.9 where the exact same word nephelē is used for Christ’s ascension (see also Rev. 12.5). Nowhere does it say that they prophesied during the GT, as most prophecy experts teach. In fact, the text implies that they arrived first on the scene, because later on, the beast that arose out of the abyss killed them. Since the beast is not revealed until the outset of the GT, and since the 2 witnesses precede him, it means that they must prophesy prior to the GT, during the first 3 & a half years of the supposed 7-year tribulation period.
Conclusion
Christ comes first, 42 months or 1,260 days prior to the “abomination of desolation” (aka the starting point of the GT) because that’s the allotted time given to the 2 witnesses to prophesy (Rev. 11.3). Then, the beast (aka Abaddon & Apollyon, meaning “destroyer” Rev. 9.11) that comes up out of the abyss and initiates the GT will kill him. The beast is also given authority for 42 months (Rev. 13.5). However, the beast’s time slot is equivalent to the duration of the GT. By contrast, Christ’s 42 months cannot occur at the same time, otherwise the rest of the passages would contradict this chronological time frame. How so? Well, according to 2 Thess. 2.7, Christ the restrainer must first be removed before the AC can be revealed. So, Christ must come first. Furthermore, Revelation 6.2 begins with the peacemaker or the white horseman (Christ; cf. Rev. 19.11) before it gets to the second horseman who “was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another” (Rev. 6.4). And since 42 months were also allotted to Christ, his timeline is necessarily not equivalent to that of the AC.
The phrase, “the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit” (Rev. 11.7) suggests either the AC’s resurrection from the dead (Rev. 13.3, 12, 14), or nuclear war (Rev 9.2-3), or both. More specifically, Rev 9.2 equates the opening of the abyss with smoke arising and darkening the sun & the air, suggestive of nuclear explosions (cf. Zech. 14.12). And given that the AC’s authority only lasts for 42 months, it seems feasible that the AC’s resurrection occurs at the beginning of the GT. After the completion of that time period he has no further authority. Which means that Christ will die sometime around the onset of the GT (or in the midst of the 7-year tribulation period as traditionally understood). It seems, then, that toward the end of the GT Christ will resurrect & initiate the rapture!
In Rev 13.3-4, the beast dies and is subsequently resurrected, and the whole earth marvels and worships him. Christ, on the other hand, will be rejected (Lk 17.25; Jn 1.11). That’s an important clue as to who is who! Rev. 13.5 says that the AC was given authority for 42 months. So, it seems as if he’s resurrected first, and then he holds sway for 42 months. Moreover, Rev. 13.7 tells us that he wages war & defeats the saints, and that authority was given to him over every tribe and tongue and nation. In fact, Rev. 13.16 is reminiscent of the passport vaccines because it says that all, rich and poor will receive a mark (charagma) on their hand so that they may not buy or sell without this mark! Seems like we’re getting close to that time period.
If the AC already controlled all the inhabitants of the earth, he wouldn’t need to start a global war. So, if the GT is his attempt to conquer the world, then his total domination must come to an end at the completion of the 42 months. Incidentally, the verse where he defeats the saints is right next to the verse about his control over every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev. 13.7). And everyone, except the saved, will worship him (Rev. 13.8). So it seems that all the hype starts with his resurrection. And yet we are told that his authority is limited to only 42 months. Rev 11 says that the AC will kill the witnesses (i.e. the messiah) when he comes out of the abyss (v. 7). By the way, this is the exact same time period that Christ is said to *die* as the atonement for our sins. Afterwards, he will *resurrect* and translate us to heaven (Heb. 9.26-28 NRSV):
“he has appeared once for all at the end of
the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of
himself. And just as it is appointed for
mortals to die once, and after that the
judgment, so Christ, having been offered
once to bear the sins of many, will appear
a second time, not to deal with sin, but to
save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Was the Charge Against Jesus Insurrection or Blasphemy?
By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
Many have written on Jesus the Galilean——often portraying him as someone who “was involved in anti-Roman seditious activity” and “put to death as an insurrectionist” (see e.g. Dr. Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, “[Why] Was Jesus the Galilean Crucified Alone? Solving a False Conundrum,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36.2 [2013] 127-154; & “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” a book by Muslim writer and scholar Reza Aslan).
But these speculative reconstructions have nothing to do with the New Testament literary accounts. These religious scholars should not be allowed to tamper with the internal evidence by altering it to suit their theological objectives. Let me give you an example why that would run counter to the standards of textual criticism. If modern scholars, who are far removed from ancient times, were to be given such artistic license as to change the words of Homer or Virgil, for instance, then it would no longer be Homer or Virgil that we would be reading but rather a modern 21st century forgery or adaptation of their works. Classicists would rightly be outraged! So then, if these interpolations are inexcusable in classical literature (e.g. in ancient Greco-Roman works), why are these religious scholars allowed to rewrite history and change the words of the New Testament accounts by superimposing their own imaginations on the text? Who gave them the licentia poetica (poetic license) to do so? Such books abound in the popular literature whose authors helped shape our modern views of Jesus!
Sadly, it would seem that none of these scholars have carefully consulted the Greek New Testament to see what it says on the matter, including the scriptural *messianic context* in which it says it. For example, Matthew 26.63-66 says categorically and unequivocally that Jesus was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish leaders. Specifically, Jesus purportedly blasphemed by claiming to be the Messiah, the king of the Jews (i.e. the new David cf. Ezekiel 37.24 [NRSV]: “My servant David shall be king over them;” Ezekiel 37.25 “and my servant David shall be their prince forever”). In fact, during Caiaphas’ interrogation, Jesus purportedly responded by identifying himself with the Danielic Son of Man (Υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου), a messianic figure who will one day come in the clouds of heaven (Matthew 26.64). That’s precisely when the high priest cried out (v. 65): “He has blasphemed!” (Ἐβλασφήμησεν). Then at Matthew 26.66, the high priest asked the attending council:
What is your verdict? They answered, ‘He
deserves death.’
The members of the Sanhedrin (vv. 57, 59) answered in unison: “He deserves death” (Ἔνοχος θανάτου ἐστίν)! This is explicitly recorded at Mark 15.26 as well, where the official charge against Jesus was said to be inscribed on his cross:
The inscription of the charge against him
read, ‘The King of the Jews.’
Conclusion
The context of the literary account in Gethsemane, prior to the crucifixion, is one of prayer and supplication. It has absolutely nothing to do with violence or any plans to overthrow the Roman legions. Moreover, the Sanhedrin’s verdict, that was later inscribed on Jesus’ cross, was NOT insurrection but rather blasphemy, namely, that he claimed to be the Messiah: “The King of the Jews” (i.e. Mashiach Ben David cf. Jn 19.7)! In fact, the so-called charge against Jesus of political insurrection is never once mentioned in the New Testament!
So, if we’re going to engage in academic exegesis, we must avoid presuppositions, assumptions, speculations, & conjectures. We must allow expositional constancy or the analogy of scripture, and the original biblical languages, to guide our hermeneutic. In other words, we must not impose our own private interpretations on the text. Rather, we must allow the text ITSELF to give us the authorial intent (meaning)! Thus, even though some liberal scholars are very familiar with the gospel literature, nevertheless they’re constantly inserting or imposing extraneous, extra-biblical material to put a Roman spin on it. This is a clear violation of the standard principles of biblical interpretation!
The Quran Mirrors the Bible: Surah 3.55 Echoes Revelation 12.5
By Author & Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
——-
Surah 3.55 (Quran)
Lo! Allah said: “O Isa (Jesus)! Verily, I shall
cause thee to die, and shall raise thee up
unto Me … unto the Day of Resurrection.
——-
Revelation 12.4-5 (Bible)
Then the dragon stood before the woman
who was about to bear a child, so that he
might devour her child as soon as it was
born. And she gave birth to a son [Jesus], a
male child, who is to rule all the nations
with a rod of iron. But her child was
snatched away and taken to God and to his
throne.
——-
Commentary
The reference to the “great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns” (Rev. 12.3) indicates that this event is taking place in the end-times. That’s because the 10 horns are said to “make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them” (Rev. 17.12-14) at the end of the age! So, the temporal juxtaposition of the “great red dragon” with the pregnant woman (Rev. 12.2) signifies that the dragon and the pregnant woman are contemporaries. In other words, they exist at the same point in time. The idea that “the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child [Jesus], so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born” (Rev. 12.4) means that the dragon wanted to put the newborn to death. The sequence of events continues as follows (Rev. 12.5):
she gave birth to a son [Jesus], a male
child, who is to rule all the nations with a
rod of iron. But her child was snatched
away and taken to God and to his throne.
Curiously enough, the verse doesn’t deny that the newborn was killed. It only affirms that he was subsequently “snatched away” or raptured unto God. The Greek word ἡρπάσθη comes from ἁρπάζω (harpazó), which is the same word used in 1 Thess. 4.17 for the rapture! But this is also a reference to the resurrection of the dead, which occurs simultaneously with the rapture (see 1 Thess. 4.16-17). Incidentally, in this context, the term τέκνον or child seemingly refers to both a spiritual and a physical birth. Given the development of the passage, coupled with the said activities of the “son” (υἱόν)——i.e. dying, ascending to heaven, and so on——it’s quite obvious that, technically speaking, the child (Jesus) is not an infant. Thus, the biblical jargon suggests the initial physical appearance of Jesus on the world stage, who is spiritually born (or reborn) in God.
Revelation 12 clearly indicates that these are all end-time events. For example, cosmic “war broke out in heaven” (12.7). It’s also the time when Satan will be incarnated as the Antichrist & the kingdom of God “and the authority of his Messiah” will come into full view (Rev. 12.10). Further proof is given by the allusion to the Great Tribulation (Rev. 12.14), which lasts for 42 months or 3 and one half years (cf. Dan. 7.25; 12.7; Rev. 11.2; 13.5). Revelation 12.13-14 informs us that the dragon then persecuted the people of God——represented by the woman, the mother church, as it were——but they were protected for 3 and one half years:
[the dragon] pursued the woman who had
given birth to the male child [Jesus]. But the
woman was given the two wings of the
great eagle, so that she could fly from the
serpent into the wilderness, to her place
where she is nourished for a time, and
times, and half a time.
Conclusion
So what does it mean? Revelation 12 is basically telling us that the child Jesus is born in the end-times and dies soon thereafter. Then, the implication is that he is raised from the dead and “snatched away” into heaven. Since the rapture and the resurrection of the dead occur simultaneously, and since this event takes place in the end-times, it must happen during the so-called “Great day of Resurrection,” when all the dead who ever lived will come back to life (cf. Dan. 12.1-2; 1 Thess. 4.16-17; 1 Cor. 15.22-24)!
Surprisingly, that’s precisely what the Quran implies as well. Surah 3.55 seems to say that Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension will take place in the end-times, during the Day of Resurrection:
Lo! Allah said: “O Isa (Jesus)! Verily, I shall cause thee to die, and shall raise thee up unto Me … unto the Day of Resurrection.
Therefore, Surah 3.55 (Quran) seems to echo Revelation 12.5 (Bible).
——-
Who are the “Earth Dwellers” in the Bible? And Will There Be a Zombie Apocalypse?
By Award-Winning Goodreads Author & Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
There are many pre-tribulation pastors today who are preaching that the so-called “earth dwellers” of the Bible represent a particular class of people who are distinct from the church of God (i.e. “the elect”) and are therefore under God’s judgment. To prove their point, they’ll typically take a verse where the phrase seems to be used in that particular way, and then they’ll make false generalizations that this is how it’s typically used throughout the Bible. Revelation 13.8 (SBLGNT) is a case in point. It reads:
καὶ προσκυνήσουσιν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ
κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς
Translation (KJV):
And all that dwell upon the earth shall
worship him [the beast].
The pre-trib expositors typically argue that since the church has been raptured by the time we get to Revelation 4, then obviously the phrase “all that dwell upon the earth” (in Revelation 13 and elsewhere) must be referring to those who have been left behind, namely, the damned. However, since the *great tribulation* is mentioned several times in the Book of Revelation, one would naturally expect that all the inhabitants of the earth, both good & bad, will experience much suffering and turmoil (cf. Rev. 8.13; 13.12; 13.14; 17.8). Besides, this is not the way the Greek phrase οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς is used throughout the Bible. Therefore, these pre-trib pastors are deliberately taking the *meaning* of the phrase οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς (all that dwell upon the earth) out of context!
Their teaching is actually erroneous and misleading. It all starts from a false pre-trib rapture position. The logic goes something like this. Because the church will be supposedly raptured early on, this means that the so-called “earth dwellers,” who are mentioned later in the Book of Revelation, must be a particular class of people who are left behind (i.e. the *unsaved*). Moreover, these teachers often try to impose their own view by wrongly interpreting every instance where the “earth dwellers” are mentioned, in both the OT and NT, as the *unsaved.* But this is a false teaching. It’s not only false because the original Hebrew & Greek do not support these interpretations, but also because they’re mangling scripture by the inaccurate eschatological eisegeses concerning the sequence of end time events. This mishandling of scripture is suggestive of gross incompetence on the part of those who are making these claims!
For example, the Greek phrase τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς simply means “those who inhabit the earth,” or “those who live on the earth.” Whether we look at the OT, the NT, or the LXX, the meaning is the same. This phrase is obviously referring to all the people who live on the earth, irrespective of belief or unbelief. Yet pastors like Tiff Shuttlesworth, as well as other pre-tribbers, falsely interpret the so-called “earth dwellers” as the “damned,” or as a particular classification of people who are left behind. They obviously don’t understand Koine Greek!
When the Hebrew OT talks about “earth dwellers,” it implies the entire world, not just the damned. For instance, Isaiah 18.3 (BHS) reads:
כָּל־יֹשְׁבֵ֥י תֵבֵ֖ל וְשֹׁ֣כְנֵי אָ֑רֶץ
Transliteration:
kāl (all) yō·šə·ḇê (inhabitants) tê·ḇêl (of the
world) wə·šō·ḵə·nê (and dwellers on)
’ā·reṣ (the earth).
Alternative Translations:
All you people of the world, everyone who
lives on the earth (NLT).
All you inhabitants of the world, you who
dwell on the earth (ESV).
Contrary to what pre-tribbers are claiming, the OT is referring to all the people of the earth, both good and bad, not simply to the damned per se!
The LXX follows suit and uses the Greek terms κατοικουμένη and κατοικηθήσεται to mean “inhabited.” These terms are obviously cognate with κατοικοῦντας, the word that is used in the NT for “inhabitants.” The Greek terms in the LXX are referring to all the inhabitants of a country, not simply to the damned. For example, Isaiah 18.3 LXX reads:
πάντες ὡς χώρα κατοικουμένη·
κατοικηθήσεται ἡ χώρα αὐτῶν.
L.C.L. Brenton Translation:
Now all the rivers of the land shall be
inhabited as an inhabited country.
The LXX uses the terms κατοικουμένη and κατοικηθήσεται——which are derived from κατοικέω (G2730)——to refer to the “inhabited” land, and, by implication, to the “dwellers” or “inhabitants” thereof. In other words, it’s referring to the entire population of a country as a whole, not simply to its evil constituents!
The cognate κατοικοῦντας (G2730) is the word that the NT uses for those people who are “inhabiting” cities (Acts 9.22, 32), provinces (Acts 19.10), as well as the entire world (Rev. 11.10)! For example, the phrase τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ⸃ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς (Rev. 8.13) simply refers to all those who inhabit (or dwell on) the earth. In and of itself, this expression does not make a value judgment. Neither does the Greek term κατοικοῦντες (i.e. “dwellers”; see Acts 2.5). Depending on the particular context of a verse, it can take on different meanings. But the above-mentioned phrase is simply referring to the inhabitants of the entire world, not to a certain class of people, let alone the damned. See the *Blue Letter Bible*:
https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/inflections.cfm?strongs=G2730&t=MGNT&ot=MGNT&word=%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF%E1%BF%A6%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B5%CF%82
The aforementioned confusion stems from the false theory that Christians will be raptured early on, prior to the great tribulation, which implies that the “earth dwellers” who will remain——and who are later mentioned in the Book of Revelation——must be the damned. But the church is mentioned many times after Revelation 4. And the church will certainly go through the tribulation, which is *not* God’s wrath. So, the Biblical references to the “earth dwellers” concern all people, good and bad, unless otherwise indicated by the context!
Will there be a Zombie Apocalypse?
In the OT, Daniel 12.2 (NIV) was prophesying a general resurrection of the dead:
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the
earth will awake: some to everlasting life,
others to shame and everlasting contempt.
This means that the general resurrection of the dead will include both the saved and the unsaved. According to Daniel 12.2, both groups will be resurrected together. But keep in mind that, according to 1 Thess. 4.16-17, the *rapture* and *resurrection* events will be contemporaneous with each other. So, if the *saved*——who will be resurrected from the dead——are “caught up … in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,” then there will definitely be a *zombie apocalypse* because the *damned* will also be *resurrected* and roam the earth!
——-
For further details, see my essay:
Three Questions On the Rapture: Is it Pre-Trib or Post-Trib? Is it Secret or Not? And is it Imminent?
https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/628794727776632832/three-questions-on-the-rapture-is-it-pre-trib-or
——-
Does the Phrase Ἔτι ἅπαξ in Hebrews 12.26 Mean “Once” or “Once More”?
By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
The New Testament Versions
There are various theories about past catastrophic Biblical events. For example, some biblical narratives describe a time when the earth trembled, such as the mighty earth-quake at Mount Sinai when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, or the cataclysmic Noachian Deluge. Some Biblical scholars even theorize about a so-called “Gap Theory" (between the first and second verses of Genesis) regarding two different creations, or even an earlier creation-and-destruction of the universe prior to the current one.
So when we encounter biblical verses that seem to suggest some type of primordial earthly destruction, scholars often theorize about the probability of such events taking place as the ones mentioned above. Hebrews 12.26 is a case in point. It talks about some form of judgment in which God “will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” But there seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether or not this event will happen for the very first time. That’s because the key phrase Ἔτι ἅπαξ has been variously translated in two different ways: “once” and “once more.” The former suggests a first time, the latter, a second. Hence, the meaning of the text remains an open question. Hebrews 12.26 (SBLGNT) declares:
οὗ ἡ φωνὴ τὴν γῆν ἐσάλευσεν τότε, νῦν δὲ
ἐπήγγελται λέγων · Ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω οὐ
μόνον τὴν γῆν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν οὐρανόν.
Translation (NIV):
At that time his voice shook the earth, but
now he has promised, ‘Once more I will
shake not only the earth but also the
heavens.’
Most of the Bible versions of Hebrews 12.26 (with the exception of a few that I’m aware of) translate Ἔτι ἅπαξ as “once more.” That’s because Ἔτι can mean not only “still,” “yet,” “again,” but it can also relate to *time* and mean “longer” (Mt. 5.13; Lk 16.2; 20.36; Jn 7.33), “further” (Mt. 26.65; Lk 22.71), as well as “moreover” (Acts 2.26).
So, if the correct translation of Heb. 12.26 is “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens,” then the question arises: is this verse referring to Mt Sinai, the flood, the gap theory, or perhaps to a previous universe that was once-destroyed to make way for the creation of our own?
For example, one particular Bible version speculates that the reference in Heb. 12.26 is to the mighty earth-quake at Mount Sinai. The Amplified Bible reads:
His voice shook the earth [at Mount Sinai]
then, but now He has given a promise,
saying, ‘YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE
NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE
[starry] HEAVEN.’
However, on closer inspection, the aforementioned translation is speculative because this “shaking” does not only involve the earth but also the heavens. At Mount Sinai, only the earth trembled (with a mighty earth-quake), not the heavens. Similarly, during the flood, neither the earth nor the heavens were destroyed: only living things (Genesis 6.7). So, the Hebrews 12.26-reference seems to imply a much larger catastrophic destruction of both the earth and the heavens. Therefore, if the verse has been faithfully translated, it can only refer to the so-called “gap theory,” or to a previously-destroyed universe.
On the other hand, the majority of the translations might be completely flawed, and the few Bible versions which suggest that this event will occur only “once” might be correct! Accordingly, the YLT version of Hebrews 12.26 proclaims:
‘Yet once -- I shake not only the earth, but
also the heaven.’
Similarly, the Darby Bible Translation exclaims:
Yet once will I shake not only the earth, but
also the heaven.
We find a similar reading in the Godbey New Testament:
I will still once shake not only the earth, but
also heaven.
Therefore, these latter versions would imply that this impending destruction will occur only once, in the future, in the same way as described, for example, in 2 Peter 3.10!
The Old Testament Versions
In trying to figure out the correct translation, it’s important to go back and look at the sources of the quoted material from the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. Hebrews 12.26 is actually quoting Haggai 2.6 via the Septuagint. Therefore, let’s go back and look at what that verse actually says both in the Hebrew Bible and in the Greek Septuagint. Haggai 2.6 (NIV) reads:
This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a
little while I will once more shake the
heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry
land.’
It’s important to note that most of the modern Bible versions of Haggai 2.6 say “once more,” but some say “once” (see e.g. ASV, Douay-Rheims Bible, Good News Translation, JPS Tanakh 1917, and a few others). The KJB also says “once” at Haggai 2.6:
For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once,
it is a little while, and I will shake the
heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and
the dry land;
Here, however, the KJB is inconsistent. While it says “once” in Haggai 2.6, it says “once more” in the parallel verse of Hebrews 12.26:
Yet once more I shake not the earth only,
but also heaven.
In Haggai 2.6, the Hebrew text (BHS) has אַחַ֖ת (once) ע֥וֹד (yet/again). In other words, the term ע֥וֹד (od) can be translated either as “yet” or “again.” But even the Hebrew Bible versions have conflicting translations. For example, the Sefaria Bible implies that this destructive event will occur only “once.” It reads thusly:
For thus said the LORD of Hosts: In just a
little while longer I will shake the heavens
and the earth, the sea and the dry land.
Similarly, the JPS Tanakh (1985) says:
For thus said the LORD of Hosts: In just a
little while longer I will shake the heavens
and the earth, the sea and the dry land.
The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) also seems to suggest “yet once in a little while”:
כִּ֣י כֹ֤ה אָמַר֙ יְהוָ֣ה צְבָאֹ֔ות עֹ֥וד אַחַ֖ת מְעַ֣ט הִ֑יא וַאֲנִ֗י מַרְעִישׁ֙ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם וְאֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ וְאֶת־הַיָּ֖ם וְאֶת־הֶחָרָבָֽה׃
By contrast, the Hebrew Bible——edited by translator and scholar, Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg——featured in Chabad.org reads:
For so said the Lord of Hosts: [There will
rise] another one, and I will shake up the
heaven and the earth and the sea and the
dry land [for] a little while.
So, even these Hebrew versions conflict. Most of them imply “once,” while the last one suggests “another.” So there are arguments on both sides. However, the most credible ones seem to suggest “once” for all. That’s probably why the Greek translations (LXX & NT) employ the term hapax (ἅπαξ), which also means “once for all”!
Let’s now explore how the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translates it. The LXX renders Haggai 2.6 thusly:
διότι τάδε λέγει Κύριος παντοκράτωρ· ἔτι
ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν
καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ τὴν ξηράν·
English translation by L.C.L. Brenton:
For thus saith the Lord Almighty; Yet once I
will shake the heaven, and the earth, and
the sea, and the dry [land].
Thus, the Septuagint agrees with most of the Hebrew Bible versions that Haggai 2.6 is saying “once,” not “once more.”
Interestingly enough, Hebrews 12.26 quotes the Septuagint-phrase ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω verbatim (word for word), with a slight variation on the theme concerning “the heavens and the earth” at the end of the sentence. Hebrews 12.26 reads:
Ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω οὐ μόνον τὴν γῆν
ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν οὐρανόν.
Notice that both the LXX and the NT texts use the exact same key-phrase ἔτι ἅπαξ. Yet the LXX and most of the Hebrew versions say “once,” while most of the New Testament translations render it as “once more.” So which is it? If both the Septuagint and the New Testament are saying the exact same thing, then why are these texts translated differently? Both cannot be correct. According to the law of non-contradiction, contradictory statements cannot both be true. So, somewhere, somehow, someone got it wrong! The question is, what’s the right answer? What’s the correct translation?
Conclusion
The Septuagint translates the term עוֹד (od) as ἔτι (yet), and renders the phrase ‘ō·wḏ ’a·ḥaṯ as “yet once.” As far as the Hebrew translations are concerned, both the Sefaria Bible and the JPS Tanakh (1985) imply “once.” The BHS also seems to imply “once.” Only the Chabad.org Bible (with Rashi's commentary) seems to suggest “once more.” So, most of the Old Testament Hebrew and Greek texts support the phrase “yet once,” not “once more” or “once again”! All in all, from the point of view of the Old Testament concerning Haggai 2.6, it seems that both the Hebrew and the Greek versions agree on the “yet once” meaning!
Carrying this information over into the New Testament, we come to realize that the key phrase (ἔτι ἅπαξ) in Haggai 2.6 (LXX), which is quoted in Hebrews 12.26, should have the exact same meaning in the New Testament as it does in the Old Testament, namely, “yet once.” Yet, surprisingly, most of the modern NT translations say “once more,” although there are some that do say “once,” as has already been noted. Therefore, the modern translations of the New Testament are actually conflicting with the Old Testament data. Apparently, the range of meanings for the word Ἔτι makes it unclear as to which word should be applied.
So, if we combine our findings, it seems that more attention should be placed on the Hebrew and Greek Old Testament versions from which the quote of Haggai 2.6 is derived. Given that they are the sources of the Hebrews 12.26-phrase, the usages in these versions carry more weight than those of the New Testament translations in steering us in the right linguistic direction. Therefore, despite the fact that most of the modern Bible versions have “once more” for Hebrews 12.26, the few translations that have “yet once” (e.g. the YLT, Darby, etc.) might be closer to the truth!
Bottom line, given the range of meanings for the aforementioned terms, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact rendering of both the Haggai 2.6 and Hebrews 12.26 phrases, especially since even the Hebrew translations have divergent meanings. Nevertheless, given that most of the Hebrew and Greek Old Testament versions agree on the phrase “yet once,” it seems more likely that this is the authorial intent of Haggai 2.6. And since that happens to be the exact same phrase in Hebrews 12.26, there’s no reason for the meaning to be any different than that which we find in Haggai 2.6 (LXX). Thus, it appears that the meaning of Hebrews 12.26 is faithfully translated in the YLT version which reads:
‘Yet once -- I shake not only the earth, but
also the heaven.’
This exegetical conclusion, of course, would not support the so-called “Gap Theory" or an earlier destruction of the universe prior to the current one. Rather, it would point to one final destruction at the end of the world!
Israelology Versus Replacement Theology: Is the Bible about Israel or Jesus?
Eli Kittim
If Jesus is the Messianic fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible, then the Old Testament is essentially Christocentric (not Jewishcentric) and the New Testament is not talking about two peoples (the Jews & the church) but rather one: the elect (cf. Eph. 2:19-20), which is to say that the overarching theme of the Old Testament is not about a race but about a person: the Messiah!
If in fact there are 2 peoples with 2 different sets of standards (law & grace) by which they’re saved, then that would invalidate Christ’s atonement, as would the rebuilding of the third Jewish temple, which would necessitate the reinstituting of animal sacrifices. However, the Bible is not about ethnicity, racism, or nationalism. In Romans 2:28-29 (NASB), Paul redefines what the term Jew means in scripture:
For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly,
nor is circumcision that which is outward in
the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one
inwardly; and circumcision is of the heart.
In the Bible, there are not two people of God, but only one: those who are in Christ. At the end of the age, Christ will separate “the sheep from the goats” (Mt. 25.32). In other words, there are only two categories: you are either in Christ or out of Christ! The Bible is Christocentric. It is not ethnocentric. It’s not about a race.
Instead of admitting that they view the Bible as being about their race and not about Christ, the Hebrew Roots Movement dresses it up euphemistically as though the controversy was about the Jews versus the church. But that’s a misnomer. The real controversy is this: they don’t believe that the Bible is about Christ. But they hide that from you! Messianic Jews are often far more Judaic than they let on.
Read the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 9. It’s all about how Christ is greater than the temple sacrifices or the Law of Moses. This is a New Covenant. So why are the Jews holding on to the old one? Hebrews 8:13 declares:
When He [God] said, ‘A new covenant,’ He
has made the first obsolete.
Both Galatians and Romans are authentic Pauline letters. In those letters, Paul says categorically & unequivocally that we are saved by Grace, not by the Law. Paul says in Galatians 2:16:
a person is not justified by works
of the Law but through faith in Christ.
In Galatians 2:21, Paul says:
if righteousness comes through the Law, then
Christ died needlessly.
In Galatians 3:11, Paul repeats the justification of faith teaching:
that no one is justified by the Law before
God is evident; for, ‘the righteous one will
live by faith.’
It’s also found in many other places, including Romans 3:20:
by the works of the Law none of mankind
will be justified in His sight.
It doesn’t get any clearer than that. We are not to observe the law. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. According to Acts 4:12:
there is salvation in no one else [except
Jesus Christ]; for there is no other name
under heaven that has been given among
mankind by which we must be saved.
Yahweh is never once mentioned in the New Testament. Moreover, Galatians 3:7 says that we are the sons of Abraham by faith (not by race):
recognize that it is those who are of faith
who are sons of Abraham.
Ephesians 2:12-13 says that through “the blood of Christ” the elect are now part of God’s family. There’s only one plan, one family, one salvation, and one Lord, not 2 different salvation plans, or 2 peoples. It’s not that we have replaced Israel but that we have been brought into one family through Jesus’ atonement (the new covenant) which was prophesied in Jeremiah 31.31.
Incidentally, the history of replacement theology doesn’t go back to the dispensationalism of the 1800s, but rather to the early church. In Jer. 3:8, God gave Israel an official certificate of divorce. In Mt. 21:43, Jesus promised that the kingdom of God will be taken away from the Jews and given to another nation. Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) concurred that God’s covenant with Israel was annulled and that the Jews had been replaced by the Gentiles. Origen’s (185-253 AD) view was along the same lines. Irenaeus (ca. 130-202 AD) also proclaimed that God disinherited the Jews from his grace. Tertullian (ca. 155-220 AD) also held that the Jews had been rejected by God. Similarly, Eusebius (ca. 265-339 AD) held that the promises of Scripture were given to the Gentiles because only the Church was the “true Israel.” This was also the view of St. Augustine (354-430 AD). So, this view didn’t start in the 19th century. It was there from the beginning.
The covenant of the seed (in Genesis 12) is a reference to Christ (see Gal. 3:16). Notice that Abraham is the “father of many nations” (Gen. 17:5), not just one. So the covenant with Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 17:8) is with multiple nations, not just one! And all these are part of the covenant through Abraham’s seed, who is Christ! That’s why Isaiah 61:9 explicitly refers to God’s posterity as the people of the Gentiles:
their offspring will be known among the
nations [Gentiles], And their descendants in
the midst of the peoples. All who see them
will recognize them because they are the
offspring whom the Lord has blessed.
“It is not the children of the flesh … but the children of the promise [who] are regarded as descendants [of Israel]” (Rom 9:6-8). Here’s further proof that the language which was once used for Israel is now used to address the church (cf. Gal. 6:16). In contradistinction to those who don’t believe in Christ, 1 Peter 2:9 is addressing the church who does believe in Christ, saying:
But you are a chosen people, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for
God’s own possession.
In Colossians 1:26, “the mystery which had been hidden from the past ages and generations, but now has been revealed to His saints” is that the Gentiles are co-inheritors with Israel (cf. Gal 3:28). Ephesians 3:6 says:
This mystery is that through the gospel the
Gentiles are heirs together with Israel,
members together of one body, and sharers
together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
The real controversy about replacement theology is this: is the Bible about Judaism or Jesus? Jews argue that the Bible is not about Christ. Their Dual-covenant theology holds that the Old Covenant remains valid for Jews whereas the New Covenant is only applicable to gentiles.
Bottom line, the Bible is not about a nation or a race. It’s about a person: the God-incarnate Messiah. Those who believe in Christ think that the Bible is about Christ. Those who don’t really believe in Christ think that the Bible is about the nation of Israel. It’s that simple.
What is the argument about? It’s really about whether we pledge allegiance to Moses or to Jesus.
Has Christ been divided?
(1 Corinthians 1:13).
The Bible Attributes the Hidden Name of God to Greece
Eli kittim
The Greek New Testament Unlocks the Meaning of God’s Name
The meaning of God’s name (YHVH) was originally incoherent and indecipherable until the appearance of the Greek New Testament. In Isaiah 46:11, God says that he will call the Messiah “from a distant country” (cf. Matt. 28:18; 1 Cor. 15:24-25). Similarly, in Matt. 21:43, Jesus promised that the kingdom of God will be taken away from the Jews and given to another nation. That’s why Isaiah 61:9 says that the Gentiles will be the blessed posterity of God (through the messianic seed). Paul also says categorically and unequivocally, “It is not the children of the flesh [the Jews] … but the children of the promise [who] are regarded as descendants [of Israel]” (Rom. 9:6-8).
These passages demonstrate why the New Testament was not written in Hebrew but in Greek. In fact, most of the New Testament books were composed in Greece. The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek, and most of the epistles address Greek communities. Not to mention that the New Testament authors used the Greek Old Testament as their Inspired text and copied extensively from it. That’s also why Christ attributed the divine I AM to the Greek language (alpha and omega). Now why did all this happen? Was it a mere coincidence or an accident, or is it because God’s name is somehow associated with Greece? Let’s explore this question further.
YHVH (I AM)
Initially, God did not disclose the meaning of his name to Moses (Exod. 3:14), but only the status of his ontological being: “I Am.” The four-letter Hebrew theonym יהוה (transliterated as YHVH) is the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, and it’s pronounced as yahva. In Judaism, this name is forbidden from being vocalized or even pronounced.
Hebrew was a consonantal language. Vowels and cantillation marks were devised much later by the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries AD. Thus, to call the divine name Yahva is a rough approximation. We really don’t know how to properly pronounce the name or what it actually means. But, through linguistic and biblical research, we can propose a scholarly hypothesis.
God Explicitly Identifies Himself with the Language of the Greeks
Since God’s name (the divine “I AM”) was revealed in the New Testament vis-à-vis the first and last letters of the Greek writing system (“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” Rev. 22:13), then it necessarily must reflect a Greek name. The letters Alpha and Omega constitute “the beginning and the end” of the Greek alphabet. Put differently, the creator of the universe (Heb. 1:2) explicitly identifies himself with the language of the Greeks! That explains why the New Testament was written in Greek rather than Hebrew. That’s also why we are told “how God First concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for his name” (Acts 15:14):
“And with this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written, … ‘THE GENTILES WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME’ “ (Acts 15:15-17).
This is a groundbreaking statement because it demonstrates that God’s name is not derived from Hebraic but rather Gentile sources. The Hebrew Bible asserts the exact same thing:
“All the Gentiles… are called by My name” (Amos 9:12).
The New Testament clearly tells us that God identifies himself with the language of the Greeks: “ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God” (Rev. 1:8). In the following verse, John is “on the [Greek] island called Patmos BECAUSE of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 1:9 italics mine). We thus begin to realize why the New Testament was written exclusively in Greek, namely, to reflect the Greek God: τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ⸂Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ⸃ (Titus 2:13)! Incidentally, God is never once called Yahva in the Greek New Testament. Rather, he is called Lord (kurios). Similarly, Jesus is never once called Yeshua. He is called Ἰησοῦς, a name which both Cyril of Jerusalem (catechetical lectures 10.13) and Clement of Alexandria (Paedagogus, Book 3) considered to be derived from Greek sources.
Yahva: Semantic and Phonetic Implications
If my hypothesis is accurate, we must find evidence of a Greek linguistic element within the Hebrew name of God (i.e. Yahva) as it was originally revealed to Moses in Exod. 3:14. Indeed, we do! In the Hebrew language, the term “Yahvan” represents the Greeks (Josephus Antiquities I, 6). Therefore, it is not difficult to see how the phonetic and grammatical mystery of the Tetragrammaton (YHVH, commonly pronounced as Yahva) is related to the Hebrew term Yahvan, which refers to the Greeks. In fact, the Hebrew names for both God and Greece (Yahva/Yahvan) are virtually indistinguishable from one another, both grammatically and phonetically! The only difference is in the Nun Sophit (Final Nun), which stands for "Son of" (Hebrew ben). Thus, the Tetragrammaton plus the Final Nun (Yahva + n) can be interpreted as “Son of God.” This would explain why strict injunctions were given that the theonym must remain untranslatable under the consonantal name of God (YV). The Divine Name can only be deciphered with the addition of vowels, which not only point to “YahVan,” the Hebrew name for Greece, but also anticipate the arrival of the Greek New Testament!
There’s further evidence for a connection between the Greek and Hebrew names of God in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a few Septuagint manuscripts, the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) is actually translated in Greek as ΙΑΩ “IAO” (aka Greek Trigrammaton). In other words, the theonym Yahva is translated into Koine Greek as Ιαω (see Lev. 4:27 LXX manuscript 4Q120). This fragment is dated to the 1st century BC. Astoundingly, the name ΙΑΩΝ is the name of Greece (aka Ἰάων/Ionians/IAONIANS), the earliest literary records of whom can be found in the works of Homer (Gk. Ἰάονες; iāones) and also in the writings of the Greek poet Hesiod (Gk. Ἰάων; iāōn). Bible scholars concur that the Hebrew name Yahvan represents the Iaonians; that is to say, Yahvan is Ion (aka Ionia, meaning “Greece”).
We find further evidence that the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) is translated as ΙΑΩ (IAO) in the writings of the church fathers. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) and B.D. Eerdmans, Diodorus Siculus refers to the name of God by writing Ἰαῶ (Iao). Irenaeus reports that the Valentinians use Ἰαῶ (Iao). Origen of Alexandria also employs Ἰαώ (Iao). Theodoret of Cyrus writes Ἰαώ (Iao) as well to refer to the name of God.
Summary
Therefore, the hidden name of God in the Septuagint, the New Testament, and the Hebrew Bible seemingly represents Greece! The ultimate revelation of God’s name is disclosed in the Greek New Testament by Jesus Christ who identifies himself with the language of the Greeks: Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ (Rev. 1:8). In retrospect, we can trace this Greek name back to the Divine “I am” in Exodus 3:14!
Biographizing the Eschaton: The Proleptic Eschatology of the Gospels
Eli Kittim
The canonical epistles strongly indicate that the narratives concerning the revelation of Jesus in the New Testament (NT) gospel literature are proleptic accounts. That is to say, the NT gospels represent the future life of Jesus as if presently accomplished. The term “prolepsis,” here, refers to the anachronistic representation of Jesus’ generation as if existing before its actual historical time. Simply put, the gospels are written before the fact. They are conveyed from a theological angle by way of a proleptic narrative, a means of biographizing the eschaton as if presently accomplished. In other words, these are accounts about events that haven’t happened yet, which are nevertheless narrated as if they have already occurred.
By contrast, the epistles demonstrate that these events will occur at the end of the age. This argument is primarily founded on the authority of the Greek NT Epistles, which affirm the centrality of the future in Christ’s only visitation! In the epistolary literature, the multiple time-references to Christ being “revealed at the end of the ages” (1 Pet. 1.20; cf. Heb. 9.26b) are clearly set in the future, including his birth, death, and resurrection (see Gal. 4.4; Eph. 1.9-10; Rev 12.5). It is as though NT history is written in advance (cf. Isa. 46.10)!
The Proleptic versus the Prophesied Jesus
The historical view is extremely problematic, involving nothing less than a proleptic interpretation of Jesus. It gives rise to numerous chronological discrepancies that cannot be easily reconciled with eschatological contexts of critical importance. What is even more troubling is that it evidently contradicts many explicit passages from both the Old and New Testaments regarding an earthly, end-time Messiah and uses bizarre gaps and anachronistic juxtapositions in chronology in order to make heterogeneous passages appear homogeneous (e.g. Job 19.25; Isa. 2.19; Dan. 12.1—2; Zeph. 1.8—9, 15—18; Zech. 12.9—10; Lk. 17.30; Acts 2.17—21; 2 Thess. 2.1—3, 7—8; Heb. 1.1—2; 9.26; 1 Pet. 1.20; Rev 12.5, 7—10).
Intertextuality in the Gospels
The canonical gospel accounts add another level of intertextual reference to the Old Testament (OT). Almost every event in Jesus’ life is borrowed from the OT and reworked as if it’s a new event. This is called “intertextuality,” meaning a heavy dependence of the NT literature on Hebrew Scripture. A few examples from the gospels serve to illustrate these points. It’s well-known among biblical scholars that the Feeding of the 5,000 (aka the miracle of the five loaves and two fish) in Jn 6.5-13 is a literary pattern that can be traced back to the OT tradition of 2 Kings 4.40-44. The magi are also taken from Ps. 72.11: “May all kings fall down before him.” The phrase “they have pierced my hands and my feet” is from Ps. 22.16; “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” is from Ps. 69.21. The virgin birth comes from a Septuagint translation of Isa. 7.14. The “Calming the storm” episode is taken from Ps. 107.23-30, and so on & so forth. Is there anything real that actually happened which is not taken from the Jewish Bible? Moreover, everything about the trial of Jesus is at odds with what we know about Jewish Law and Jewish proceedings. It could not have occurred in the middle of the night during Passover, among other things.
There is only One Coming, not Two
The belief in the two comings of Christ equally contradicts a number of NT passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 15.22—26, 54—55; 2 Tim. 2.16—18; Rev 19.10; 22.7, 10, 18—19), not to mention those of the OT that do not separate the Messiah’s initial coming from his reign (e.g. Isa. 9.6—7; 61.1—2). Rather than viewing them as two separate and distinguishable historical events, Scripture sets forth a single coming and does not make that distinction (see Lk. 1.31—33). Indeed, each time the “redeeming work” of Messiah is mentioned, it is almost invariably followed or preceded by some kind of reference to judgment (e.g. “day of vengeance”), which signifies the commencement of his reign on earth (see Isa. 63.4). In 2 Thess 2, the author implores us not to be deceived by any rumors claiming that the Lord has already appeared: “to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here” (v. 2; cf. v. 1). His disclaimer insists that these conventions are divisive in view of the fact that they profess to be Biblically based, “as though from us” (v. 2), even though this is not the official message of Scripture.
Why Does the New Testament Refer to Christ’s Future Coming as a “Revelation”?
Why do the NT authors refer to Christ’s future coming as a “revelation”? The actual Greek word used is ἀποκάλυψις (apokalupsis). The English word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalupsis, which means “revelation.” The term revelation indicates the disclosure of something that was previously unknown. Thus, according to the meaning of the term revelation, no one knows the mystery or secret prior to its disclosure. Therefore, we cannot use the biblical term “revelation” to imply that something previously known is made known a second time. That’s not what the Greek term apokalupsis means. If it was previously revealed, then it cannot be revealed again. It’s only a revelation if it is still unknown. Thus, the word “revelation” necessarily implies a first time disclosure or an initial unveiling, appearing, or manifestation. It means that something that was previously unknown and/or unseen has finally been revealed and/or manifested. Thus, a revelation by default means “a first-time” occurrence. In other words, it’s an event that is happening for the very first time. By definition, a “revelation” is never disclosed twice.
Accordingly, the NT verses, which refer to the future revelation of Christ, never mention a second coming, a coming back, or a return, as is commonly thought. See the following verses:
1 Cor. 1.7-8; 4.5; 15.23; Phil. 1.6; 2.16; Col. 3.4; 2 Thess. 1.7; 1.10; 2.1-2; 1 Tim. 6.14; Titus 2.13; Jas. 5.7; 1 Pet. 1.13; 1 Jn. 2.28; Rev 1.1; 22.20.
In the aforementioned verses, a second coming is nowhere indicated. Conversely, Jesus’ Coming is variously referred to as an appearance, a manifestation, or a “revelation” in the last days, which seems to imply an initial coming, a first coming, and the only coming. Surprisingly, it’s not referred to as a return, a coming back, or a second coming. As N.T. Wright correctly points out, the eschatological references to Jesus in the New Testament don’t mention a second coming but rather a future appearance or manifestation. Not only do the NT writers refrain from calling Jesus’ future visitation “a second coming,” but, conversely, they further indicate that this is his first and only advent, a momentous event that will occur hapax (“once for all”) “in the end of the world” (Heb. 9.26 KJV), or “at the final point of time” (1 Peter 1.20 NJB). None of the NT authors refer to the future visitation of Christ as a second coming. It’s as though these communities expected Jesus to appear for the first time in the end of the world! The takeaway is that the NT is an apocalypse. It’s not a history.
When is the end of the age?
Eli Kittim
When is the end of the age? Not where, not how, but when? The New King James Version calls this specific time period “the end of the age,” while the King James Version refers to it as “the end of the world.” Biblical scholars often ask whether the end of the age is a reference to the end of the Jewish age, which came to an end with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., or whether it’s an allusion to the end of human history. Given that the signs of the times coincide with this particular age, we must examine whether this is literal language, referring to first century Palestine, or figurative, pertaining to the end-times.
Since “the end of the age” is a characteristic theme of the New Testament (NT), let’s look at how Jesus explains it in the parable of the tares in Matthew 13:37-43 (NKJV emphasis added):
“He answered and said to them: ‘He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!’ “
In this parable, the constituent elements of the end of the age are highlighted, namely, the end-times, judgment day, the wicked cast into the lake of fire, and the end of human history. The key phrase that is translated as “the end of the age” comes from the Greek expression συντελείᾳ τοῦ ⸀αἰῶνος. In a similar vein, let’s see how Jesus explains the eschatological dimension of the parable of the dragnet in Matthew 13:47-50 (italics mine):
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Once again, in this parable, the end of the age (συντελείᾳ τοῦ ⸀αἰῶνος) is described as taking place at the last judgment, when the righteous will be separated from the wicked, while simultaneously placing emphasis on the end of the world, when “there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Similarly, in Matthew 24:3, the disciples ask Jesus to tell them two things, namely, when will the coming of Christ and the end of the age take place. In comparison to Matthew 24:3, the book of Acts tells us that the apostles asked Jesus if he will restore the kingdom of Israel at the end of the age (Acts 1:6). This question was asked just prior to his ascension and departure. Historically speaking, Israel was restored in the 20th century, which is one of the signs that ties in closely with Jesus’ coming and the end of the age. Jesus responds in v. 7 by saying, “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.” And v. 9 informs us that Jesus’ response is part of his farewell speech. In like manner, the last recorded words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (28:18-20 emphasis added) are as follows:
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age [συντελείας τοῦ ⸀αἰῶνος].”
If Jesus promised to be with the disciples until “the end of the age,” and if that age is a reference to first century Palestine, does this mean that Jesus is no longer with those who have long since outlived their first century counterparts? Taken as a whole, this would also essentially imply that the resurrection of the dead, the rapture, the great tribulation, the lake of fire, judgment day, and the coming of Jesus were events that all took place in Antiquity. Is that a legitimate theologoumenon that captures the eschatology of the NT?
We find an analogous concept in the Septuagint of Daniel 12:1-4 (L.C.L. Brenton translation). Daniel mentions the resurrection of the dead and the great tribulation, but in v. 4 he is commanded to “close the words, and seal the book to the time of the end; until many are taught, and knowledge is increased.” Curiously enough, “the time of the end” in Daniel is the exact same phrase that Jesus uses for “the end of the age” in the NT, namely, καιροῦ συντελείας.
As for the biblical contents, given that the exact same language is employed in all of the parallel passages, it is clear that the end of the age is a future time period that explicitly refers to judgment day, the lake of fire, the harvest, and the consummation of the ages. Obviously, it has nothing to do with the time of Antiquity. Not to mention that the parousia is said to coincide with the end of the current world, when everything will dissolve in a great conflagration (2 Pet. 3:10)!
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Don't be arrogant towards those who don't believe in God, don't point out sins as if you weren't a sinner just because you think you're more righteous; if you're saved today, it's the result of grace and not your own merit. Be humble!
Don't get it twisted. Jesus didn't hang out with prostitutes because He approved of their lifestyle. He engaged with them - He loved them! - because they were in desperate need of a Savior. Real love doesn't tolerate sin. Real love holds you in His arms and asks, "Child, why do you keep hurting yourself like this?"