Showing posts with label #ChristAlmighty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #ChristAlmighty. Show all posts

Seeking Jesus—who’s curing people in the next town.

by K.W. Leslie, 05 November 2018

Mark 6.53-56, Matthew 14.34-36, John 6.22-25.

After Jesus and Peter walked on water, the gospels go in different directions. Mark heads down south to Khinnerót, a town about 8 kilometers south from Kfar Nahum. Once they land, Jesus and his students do some stuff there. Matthew follows Mark’s lead and tells much the same story.

Whereas John stays in Beit Sayid, where the 5,000 got fed, where everybody was wondering what happened to Jesus. Then they went to look for him, and it looks like they found him at his home base of Kfar Nahum. Which isn’t Khinnerót.

Readers get their choice as to how to interpret this divergence. Some of ’em claim it’s a flat-out contradiction: Jesus went either one place or the other, and can’t possibly have gone to both places. Others point it doesn’t need to be a contradiction: First Jesus landed in Khinnerót, then walked the 8 klicks to Kfar Nahum, and by the time the people finally found him in John, he was home. The stories can have happened simultaneously, y’know.

But I remind you: The authors of the gospels weren’t trying to make their stories line up, and didn’t always care about chronological order. They were sharing the parts they considered important, in an order which flowed naturally to them. If they don’t line up precisely, big deal. (If they did line up precisely, people would think they’re quoting one another—which is exactly what scholars think is the case with the synoptic gospels.) So don‘t fret that it looks like a contradiction: It’s not. The writers are just telling different stories.

But for fun, we can always pretend these stories happened simultaneously. It creates a little dramatic tension. Which, I admit, is entirely unnecessary; it’s why I say we’re doing it for fun. In real life there was probably no tension at all: No wild, desperate hunt for Jesus while he’s meanwhile busy in Khinnerót.

John 6.22-25 KWL
22 In the morning, the crowd staying on the near side of the lake looked for a boat.
But it wasn’t there; just the one.
For Jesus hadn’t gone off with his students in the boat; the students left alone instead.
23 Boats from Tiberias instead came near the place they ate the rolls for which the Master gave thanks.
24 So when the crowd saw Jesus wasn’t there, nor his students, they entered the boats and went to Kfar Nahum, seeking Jesus.
25 Finding Jesus on the far side of the lake, they said, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Why were they so anxious to find Jesus? ’Cause they deduced he’s the End Times prophet, so they wanted to stick around and follow him, and see whether he’d overthrow the Romans. The rest of John 6 dashed these hopes; I’ll discuss that in more detail later.

Jesus and Peter walk on water.

by K.W. Leslie, 29 October 2018

Mark 6.46-52 • Matthew 14.23-33 • John 6.16-21.

Right after Jesus had his students feed 5,000-plus listeners, he sent ’em to the far side of Lake Tiberias (i.e. “the Galilean Sea,” although it’s not quite that big. The Great Lakes are way bigger.) So while Jesus dismissed the crowds and left to pray, the students rowed their way south.

And the rowing wasn’t easy, ’cause the weather didn’t cooperate.

Mark 6.46-48 KWL
46 Saying goodbye, Jesus went off to a hill to pray.
47 Much later, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and Jesus was alone on land.
48A Seeing the students tortured by the rowing, for the wind was against them…
Matthew 14.23-24 KWL
23 Saying goodbye to the crowds, Jesus went up a hill by himself to pray.
Much later he was alone there. 24 The boat was already many stadia away from land,
tortured by the waves, for the wind was against it.
John 6.16-18 KWL
16 When it became later, Jesus’s students went down to the lake,
17 got into a boat, and went to the far side of the lake, to Kfar Nahum.
It had become dark, and Jesus hadn’t yet come to them.
18 The lake’s wind increased, blowing greatly.

Now, the title of this piece tipped you off what’s about to happen next: Jesus is gonna walk to them on the surface of Lake Tiberias. You’ve heard the story before. Heck, everybody’s heard of this story; walking on water is one of the most famous stunts Jesus ever pulled.

Though I should point not everyone who’s heard of this story, knows the details of this story. Pagans regularly assume Jesus is the only person who ever walked on water. Who ever could walk on water; there’s a widespread pagan interpretation that Jesus could do it because he’s so good, God would never let him sink! It surprises them when I tell ’em Simon Peter walked on water too—and then they leap to the conclusion Peter must’ve been a really good person too. Hardly. But I’m getting too far ahead of the story.

I bring up how everyone’s heard this story, to point out how most folks don’t know this story in context. They don’t know what happened before it. They don’t realize what happened before it, should’ve had enough of an impact on the students, they’d behave far differently than they did. But like Mark points out at the end of the story, these kids were pretty dense.

So I remind you there were three experiences the students should’ve bore in mind as the events in this story were taking place:

  • They weren’t unfamiliar with Lake Tiberias’s rough weather. And they also weren’t familiar with the fact Jesus once stopped this weather.
  • Day before yesterday, the Twelve had just returned to Jesus after going round the Galilee preaching the gospel, curing the sick, and throwing out demons. They had personally done what Jesus did.
  • And yesterday, Jesus had ’em feed the 5,000.

You’d think they’d be used to the impossible by now. Apparently not.

When the crowds realized Jesus is the Prophet.

by K.W. Leslie, 22 October 2018

Mark 6.45-47 • Matthew 14.22-23 • John 6.14-17.

Christians are far from decided about how the End Times are gonna play out. Well, most of us are undecided: We recognize God was deliberately vague about the details, and aren’t gonna presume to declare what his apocalyptic revelations mean. Sometimes because we’re too intimidated to try; sometimes because we know better than to try. Of course some of us aren’t so humble, and have even made intricate timelines.

What did the Pharisees do when it came to End Times speculation? Oh, they totally made timelines. You probably guessed that about ’em.

Not that their timelines lined up with one another. If you ever read the Mishna, you’ll notice Pharisees disagreed about everything. So of course there were dozens of theories about the order of events, and the various End Times figures whom the Pharisees expected would appear. There’s Messiah of course; that’d be Jesus the Nazarene. Some Pharisees couldn’t figure out how Messiah would both rule Israel and suffer and die, so they guessed there had to be two Messiahs—of course a first and second coming never occurred to them. There’s Elijah, who was raptured to heaven in a whirlwind 2Ki 2.11 and therefore hadn’t died; Pharisees figured God was gonna send him back before the End, Mk 9.11 and Jesus identified him as John the baptist. Mt 11.13-14 And there’s the Prophet, whom certain Pharisees insisted was what God meant here:

Deuteronomy 18.17-19 KWL
17 The LORD told me, “What they said is good.
18 So I raise them a prophet, like you, from among their family.
I put my words in his mouth, and he tells them everything I teach him.
19 If a person won’t listen to my words which the prophet speaks in my name, I examine them.”

Yeah, the LORD generally means any prophet he raises up—in any culture. But Pharisees imagined there’d be a quintessential prophet who especially fulfilled this word, whom the LORD would raise up special for the End Times. And Simon Peter indicated this guy also as Jesus the Nazarene.

Acts 3.17-24 KWL
17 “Now family, I know you’re acting in ignorance, just like your leaders.
18 This was how God fulfilled what he foretold through all his prophets’ mouths:
His Messiah was to suffer.
19 So turn around, turn back, so your sins can be patched up!
20 So a refreshing time can come from the Master’s face.
So he can send you his appointed Messiah, Jesus.
21 Heaven has to have Jesus till the time he restores all—
which God spoke of in the prophets’ age, through his saints’ mouths.
22 Moses said this: ‘Your Lord God will raise up a prophet for you,
from your own family, like me. Listen to him, to everything which he tells you.
23 It’ll be that every soul who doesn’t listen to this prophet
will be utterly destroyed from the people.’ Dt 18.18-19
24 All the prophets since Samuel, and those who followed him,
spoke of and proclaimed these days.”

I know; Peter didn’t quote Deuteronomy accurately. The LORD said it, not Moses; and the consequence of not listening to the prophet was “I examine them” (or as an Aramaic bible has it, “my Word examines them”—you know, Jesus). Turning that into utter destruction—well that escalated quickly. But utter destruction was kinda the mindset Pharisees had about ignoring God’s prophets. If God’s speaking, and we won’t listen, we’re kinda doomed. It’s happened before.

Hence the Prophet wasn’t a minor End Times figure. He was a big deal. The Pharisees wanted to know whether John was this Prophet, and John was pretty sure he wasn’t; he didn’t even think he was Elijah. Jn 1.19-24 Pharisees were on the lookout for the guy.

Well. Once Jesus’s students fed ’em bread in the middle of nowhere—just like Moses fed the Hebrews manna in the middle of nowhere!—guess what conclusion the crowd immediately jumped to?

John 6.14 KWL
So, seeing this miracle Jesus did, the people said this:
“This is truly the Prophet who’s meant to come to the world!”

But here’s the problem: Rather than listen to anything the Prophet might have to say about what his role really consists of—you know, like the LORD told ’em they oughta do—they immediately fell back on their culture’s expectations about the Prophet. They wanted to defy the Romans, defy Herod, and make Jesus their king. Right there. Right then. Right away.

Uh-oh.

Jesus’s students feed thousands of people.

by K.W. Leslie, 15 October 2018

Mark 6.35-44, Matthew 14.15-21, Luke 9.12-17, John 6.5-13.

This story is basically Jesus’s riff on a similar situation with Elisha ben Šafat:

2 Kings 4.1-7 KWL
1 A woman, one of the women of “the sons of prophets,” cried out to Elisha
to say, “Your slave, my man, died. You know your slave respected the LORD.
He was a debtor, and a collector is coming to take two of my children as slaves.”
2 Elisha told her, “What can I do for you? Tell me. What do you have in your house?”
She said, “Your slave has nothing in her house but a pot of oil.”
3 Elisha said, “Go ask all your neighbors outside for pots for yourself.
Empty pots. Not just a few!
4 Come in the house and shut the door behind you and your children.
Pour oil into all these pots. Set aside the full pots.”
5 She went with this, and shut the door behind her and her children.
They came to her with pots, and she poured.
6 When the pots were filled, she told her children, “Bring me another!”
They told her, “There are no more pots.” The oil held out.
7 She came to tell the God’s-man of this. He said, “Go sell the oil.
Be freed of your debt. You and your children can live on what’s left over.”

God multiplied oil to bail out this prophet; God can likewise multiply food to feed the big crowd who’d accumulated to listen to Jesus’s teaching.

Usually this story’s titled, “How Jesus fed 5,000 people.” Obviously ’cause people don’t bother to pay close attention to the text. Or they remember it from Jesus movies: Jesus puts the bread and fish in a basket, lifts it to the sky, prays, lowers the basket… and now it’s magically overflowing with food. They think of that instead of reading the bible.

Jesus came up with the idea to feed the crowd from what food his students had on them. Jn 6.6 In part to show his kids Elisha-style miracles are still doable; in part to show them God’s kingdom doesn’t suffer from the limitations of this world; in part to show them they could do this. ’Cause he told his students—read it again!—“You give them something to eat.” Then Jesus made them give the people something to eat. And that’s where the miracle took place.

Seriously. Read the story. Double-check it in other translations.

Trying to get away from it all… and failing.

by K.W. Leslie, 09 July 2018

Mark 6.30-34, Matthew 14.12-14, Luke 9.10-11, John 6.1-4.

The bit where Jesus sent out his students to proclaim God’s kingdom and cure the sick, and where Jesus had them feed an audience of 5,000, were placed right next to one another in two of the synoptic gospels. Namely Mark and Luke.

Mark 6.30-31 KWL
30 Jesus’s students were gathered together to see him,
and reported everything to him—whatever they did, whatever they taught.
31 Jesus told them, “Come, by yourselves, to a place in the wilds. Stop for a little bit.”
For many people were coming and going, and they hadn’t time to even eat.
Luke 9.10 KWL
Returning, the apostles detailed for Jesus all they did.
Taking them, he withdrew with them to a town called Beit Sayid.

The reason they’re right next to one another? Because Jesus was training his students to be his apostles and minister on his behalf. With that came how to minister. And when he sends us to minister apostle-style, feeding the 5,000 is one of the ways in which he wants us to do so: Feed the hungry!

There are those Christians who figure our only job is to tell people about the kingdom—not demonstrate the kingdom by doing good deeds in Jesus’s name. Tell, not show. It’s a warped mindset, but I grew up among people of this mindset: They don’t actually love their neighbors, and this is how they weasel out of doing anything for ’em, contrary to Jesus’s teachings. Yeah, they need to get saved.

But after you’ve spent a bit of time intensively ministering to people, you do need to take a break. Get your Sabbath rest. Too many ministers work all week long: Saturday night services, Sunday morning services, and then it’s back to the usual workday ministries. They take no days off, then burn out. Jesus is the LORD who commanded Israel to take a break every week; he understands the value of rest. Don’t work yourself to death, even if your works are good works. Take a day!

Christians don’t always catch how Jesus sending his kids on a mission, is immediately followed by feeding 5,000. Because most of us aren’t in the habit of sitting down to read gospels all the way through. We break ’em up into daily readings, separate the stories from one another, read them without the previous story fresh in our minds, and don’t catch any of the context. Then people like me point out these fairly obvious facts, and Christians go, “Wow, I never realized that.” Yeah, well, stop reading it the way you’ve been reading it. You’re missing more than you realize.

Mini-rant aside: So, three gospels emphasize how Jesus took his students away for a brief rest. Problem is, they couldn’t catch a break. The crowds found out where Jesus had gone and went to see him. They had sick people and wanted ’em cured. Or they heard rumors Jesus might be Messiah, and wanted to see for themselves, and had a few days free ’cause they were getting ready to go to Jerusalem for Passover (no that’s not speculation; it’s bible Jn 6.4), so they took a detour to check him out.

So much for rest time.

John the baptist’s death.

by K.W. Leslie, 02 July 2018

Mark 6.21-29, Matthew 14.6-12.

As I mentioned previously “Herodias,” as she’s called in the King James Version, is Herodia Salome (or as I’ve westernized it, Salome Herod), granddaughter of Antipater Herod, the first “King Herod.” She’s the daughter of Aristobulus Herod, the wife of Aristobulus’s half-brother Philip, and later the wife of Aristobulus and Philip’s half-brother Antipater, or “Antipas,” as he’s usually called. Yeah, that’s how it was in the Herod family.

You might recall Salome held a grudge against John the baptist, who at this point in the gospels was in Antipas’s prison. She wanted John dead for publicly criticizing her marriage. In those days before anyone thought to protect free speech, criticizing the Roman governor was considered sedition, and treason, and got the death penalty. So as the Roman governor of the Galilee, Antipas could’ve executed John whenever he pleased. But he didn’t, either because he feared the crowds Mt 14.5 or because he liked to talk religion with John. Mk 6.20 Pick your favorite explanation; the bible’ll back you up.

Salome’s chance came on Antipas’s birthday, when Antipas—who held the hereditary title of king, though not really the job—was feeling particularly royal. Probably fortified by drink. He decided to offer a royal grant to Salome’s daughter, his stepdaughter—who, following Roman custom, was also named Herodia Salome. I’ll just refer to the mom as Senior and the daughter as Junior.

Mark 6.21-23 KWL
21 An critical day came, because Antipas Herod threw a dinner party for his birthday
for his magistrates and generals, and the princes of the Galilee.
22 His daughter, Salome Herod, came in and danced.
She pleased Antipas Herod and his guests.
The king told the girl, “Ask me whatever you want and I’ll give it to you.”
23 Antipas promised Salome, “Whatever you ask me. I’ll give you up to half my kingdom!”
Matthew 14.6-7 KWL
6 When Antipas Herod’s birthday came, Salome Herod’s daughter danced in the middle.
It pleased Herod, 7 so with an oath he promised to give her whatever she wanted.

Salome Jr. was born in the year 14. Jesus’s ministry started round the time he turned 30, Lk 3.23 which would probably be the year 22, when Salome Jr. was eight. Both gospels call her a korásion/“girl,” which means younger than the age of adulthood, 13 years old. So that helps pin down the date for this story: Between the years 22 and 27.

But a lot of Christians imagine Jesus’s ministry was only three years long. Based on what? Well they imagine Jesus died at age 33 (mixing up the year 33 with his age), and if he started at 30, that gave him only three years for all the events of the gospels to take place. Plus the gospel of John only mentions three Passovers Jesus attended, which jibes with their theory. So if Salome Jr. did her birthday dance in, say, the year 32, that’d make her an 18-year-old woman.

And then people start to leap to all sorts of unsavory speculations about what sort of dance this was—as if a Judean princess is gonna cavort in front of every civic leader of a very religious region. (And their wives, y’know.) Or they imagine what sort of relationship Antipas had with his grandniece/stepdaughter—which considering how the Herods had that reputation for inbreeding, ain’t that far of a stretch for the imagination to go. So they like to imagine a lustful Antipas leering at the girl, offering her absolutely anything she wanted, with naughty thoughts about what he wanted running through his mind.

Not that unsavory speculations don’t run through their minds even if they realize Salome Jr. was still a little girl. Me, I figure this says way more about the speculators than Antipas. And they’ve been speculating for centuries. With all sorts of inappropriate art to go along with it.

Antipas Herod and John the baptist.

by K.W. Leslie, 25 June 2018

Mark 6.14-20, Matthew 14.1-5, Luke 9.7-9.

After Jesus turned loose the Twelve to go round the Galilee, do miracles, and proclaim God’s kingdom, word of Jesus got back to the Galilee’s governor, King Antipas Herod.

Luke 9.7-9 KWL
7 The governor, Antipas Herod, heard all that was happening and was confused by it:
Some were saying John the baptist was raised from the dead.
8 Some said Elijah appeared; others said one of the ancient prophets had risen.
9 Herod said, “I beheaded John. Who’s this man about whom I hear such things?”
He sought to see Jesus.

Mark and Matthew give details about just how and why Herod beheaded John, but today I’m gonna focus on Herod himself. The gospels don’t provide a lot of details about him, which is why we have to turn to the history books to fill in the blanks.

The Herodus family was Roman. That’s why so many of them have the same names; that’s why the scriptures refer to all of them as either Herod or Herodia (the female form of Herod; KJV “Herodias”). To Romans the family, not the individual, was most important. And each member of the family represented the family; not so much themselves.

Because of this, Roman fathers tended to give all their children the same name: Their name. Gaius Plinius Secundus’s son would also be Gaius Plinius Secundus. (They might add “senior” or “junior” to indicate who was whom… but that’d get extra confusing when all the brothers had the same name.) Sometimes the kids were given a praenomen/“personal name” to differentiate between one another; sometimes a nickname; but most of the time all you knew was their cognomen/“family name.” Herod and Herodia.

Easy to mix them all up, but that was kinda the point in Roman culture.

So the Herods of the New Testament were actually one of these guys:

  • HEROD THE GREAT. Who wasn’t all that great. His Judean-style name was Herod bar Antipater; his Roman name was Herodus Antipatrus; he can also be called Herod 1. He’s the Idumean/Edomite who, with the help of the Romans, overthrew the Hasmonean royal family and took over Israel. He tried to have baby Jesus killed. I already wrote about him. His son Archelaus Herod tried to succeed him, but Augustus Caesar instead divided Israel into multiple provinces, and put three of them under Herod family members.
  • HEROD ANTIPAS. The Herod in this story, one of the sons of Herod 1, whose name was Herodus Antipatrus same as his father. (“Antipas” for short; I call him “Antipas Herod” western-style. I should mention he had a brother, also named Herodus Antipatrus, so technically he was Herodus Antipatrus Junior.) Caesar made him a tetra-árhos/“quarter-ruler” of Israel; the quarter he ruled was the Galilee. Technically he was still royalty, which is why the gospels still call him king. But he was a Roman governor, an employee serving only at the pleasure of the emperor.
  • HEROD AGRIPPA 1. Herodus Marcus Julius Agrippa, grandson of Herod 1, was a personal friend of Caligula Caesar, who made him king of Israel. He’s the Herod who had James bar Zebedee killed. Ac 12.2
  • HEROD AGRIPPA 2. Herodus Marcus Julius Agrippa, same as his father; Claudius Caesar put him in charge of various Israeli provinces. He’s the King Agrippa whom Paul testified in front of. Ac 26

We’ll just deal with Antipas Herod today.

What Jesus had to say about John the baptist.

by K.W. Leslie, 18 June 2018

Matthew 11.7-15, Luke 7.24-30.

After John sent two of his students to ask Jesus who he was, Jesus turned to his crowd of listeners and began to say complimentary things about John. (Which is further evidence John wasn’t going through some crisis of faith about who Jesus was, contrary to popular belief.)

Various “historical Jesus” scholars like to pit John and Jesus against one another ’cause their ministry styles were so different, and like to exaggerate their different emphases into full-on contradictions of one another. John was supposedly about wrath and perfectionism; Jesus about grace and peace. Ignoring of course all Jesus’s instructions to behave ourselves, and warnings about wrath; ignoring John’s declaration that Jesus came to take away the world’s sin. Jn 1.29 For “historians,” they sure do skip a lot of history in order to push their theories, but I already ranted about that.

First thing Jesus brought up is what people expected to see when they first heard about John and wanted to check him out. Starting with two things they clearly didn’t expect to see, because John’s reputation was that of an Elijah-style hairy thunderer. Mk 1.6

Matthew 11.7-8 KWL
7 As these students were going, Jesus began to tell the crowd about John the baptist.
“What did you go to the wilds to see? A wind-shaken reed?
8 What did you see instead? A person dressed in finery?
Look, those who wear finery are in kings’ houses.”
Luke 7.24-25 KWL
24 As John’s messengers went away, Jesus began to talk with the crowd about John the baptist.
“What did you go to the wilds to see? A wind-shaken reed?
25 What did you see instead? A person dressed in fancy clothes?
Look at the glorious clothes and luxury which is in the king’s palace.”

Certain commentators wanna claim these statements were kind of a knock on the Galilee’s governor, King Antipas Herod, who had imprisoned John at this time. Lk 3.19-20, Mt 11.2 The idea is Herod, as a politician, was the sort of guy who would sway like a papyrus reed in the breeze, and say or do anything to convince the Caesars to leave him in power. And of course he wore fancy clothing, as nobles do.

I don’t know that these statements were necessarily made about Herod. I suspect they’re more about wannabe prophets.

Because it’s precisely the sort of behavior we see in wannabe prophets nowadays. And human nature hasn’t changed any in the past 20 centuries: If somebody was a self-described prophet, they wanted acknowledgement. Respect. Maybe a little bit of fear. After all, they heard from God. They lacked the humility we oughta see in a real prophet, who recognizes they’re just the servant of the Almighty and nothing more; whom God doesn’t always grant the sort of messages that’d make ’em popular. Fake prophets, on the other hand, don’t have enough experience with God to realize their proper place way under him. And they’ve no trouble adjusting their messages to suck up to their audiences, because God didn’t really give them anyway. That whole wind-shaken reed thing? Applies to phony prophets just as much as it does to phony leaders.

Essentially Jesus’s message was, “When you went to check out John, did you expect to find a fake? And that’s not what you found at all.”

John the baptist checks in on Jesus.

by K.W. Leslie, 11 June 2018

Matthew 11.2-6, Luke 7.18-23.

In Jesus’s day there was no such thing as freedom of speech or religion. Your religion was either what the king said it was, or what the king permitted within his borders. Your speech was whatever the powerful couldn’t take offense at, ’cause if they did, they would kill or persecute you. That’s why Jesus taught in metaphors and parables on a frequent basis. It wasn’t just to make people think.

His relative John bar Zechariah, also known as John the baptist, was not so vague. John flat-out said the governor of the Galilee, Antipas Herod (frequently called “king” because he was the son of King Herod 1, but properly a Roman tetrárhis/“ruler of a quarter-province”) was in violation of the Law, ’cause he had married his brother’s ex. Lv 18.16 Plus she was his niece, which generally violates the command against having sex with close relatives. Lv 18.6 Since John wouldn’t shut up about it, Mk 6.17-18 Antipas threw him into prison, and so much for his ministry. John never got out alive.

In both Matthew and Luke, John heard what Jesus was up to, and sent some of his own students to ask Jesus a question. In Matthew we find out why John couldn’t do this personally: It was by this point John was in prison.

Matthew 11.2-3 KWL
2 John the baptist, hearing in prison of Messiah’s works,
sending some of his students, 3 told Jesus,
“Are you the one to come, or do we look for another?”
Luke 7.18-19 KWL
18 John the baptist’s students informed him about all these things.
Calling two particular students of his, John 19 sent them to the Master,
saying, “Are you the one to come, or do we look for another?”

And this question really confuses Christians. Because we’ve read the other parts of the gospels, in which John was entirely sure Jesus is the one to come. So it’s a little confusing when John suddenly sends Jesus some students with the question, “So are you the one to come?”

Most of the time, Christians assume John had a massive crisis of faith. After all, he’d been tossed into prison, he was gonna die, and when you ponder your mortality like this, you start to rethink everything. Maybe John didn’t believe anymore. So, to make himself feel better, he send students to Jesus with the unspoken request, “Please tell me my life hasn’t been in vain. Please tell me you’re Messiah.”

I don’t care for this interpretation. Mostly because I think the interpreters are projecting their own doubts upon John. He had no such doubts.

Jesus interrupts a funeral.

by K.W. Leslie, 04 June 2018

Luke 7.11-17.

Whereas Jesus mighta raised the dead before—though he insisted she was only asleep—here it looks like he definitely raised the dead. Only Luke tells this story, and sets it the day after Jesus cured the centurion’s servant.

The location is Nein, which is not pronounced as the Germans do. (The KJV has “Nain.”) It was a tiny village 14km south of Nazareth—and 40km southwest of Kfar Nahum, which is quite a day’s walk; and Jesus must’ve got to this place before sundown, as we’ll see from historical context. As you might recall about Nazareth, people in the region didn’t expect much of Jesus, and certainly never expected him to do anything like this.

Luke 7.11-17 KWL
11 This happened the next day: Jesus went to a village called Nein.
His students, and a large crowd, were traveling with him.
12 As Jesus approached the village gate, look: One who died was being carried out.
He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd was with her.
13 Seeing her, the Master felt compassion for her and told her, “Don’t cry.”
14 Walking over, Jesus touched the coffin and its carriers stopped.
He said, “Young man, I tell you get up.”
15 And the dead boy got up, and began to talk. Jesus gave him to his mother.
16 In fear, everyone praised God, saying this:
“A great prophet rose among us!” and “God visited his people!”
17 This word about Jesus spread in all Judea and all the region.

Skeptics like to point out this story is similar to pagan stories. Which stands to reason: Back then, people used to bury or cremate you when they thought you were dead. Or at least pretty sure you were dead… and yeah, sometimes if they really wanted you to be dead, and weren’t particular about how you weren’t quite dead yet. But more than once they buried or cremated someone alive. Every once in a while they dramatically discovered they were wrong—someone’d wake up from their coma on the funeral pyre, or after they were stuck in a sepulcher. Standard worst-nightmare stuff. And that’s where our urban legends come from… and of course our old myths.

Anyway the hero of more than one myth would check out the “corpse,” find out they were only mostly dead, and there’s your happy ending. Well, unless they died soon thereafter of whatever made ’em look dead.

For Pharisees it was a little more likely they’d inter someone prematurely: Their custom required them to put a body in the ground before sundown. It was based on God’s command to bury a hanging victim the same day, Dt 21.23 and if you gotta do it for a criminal, you should do it all the more for anyone else. So if it looked like someone had died, you didn’t always have a lot of time before you had to dispose of the body. Plenty of chance people would be mistaken.

But Luke said this boy was dead, so there was no mistake here. Jesus didn’t come across a boy who wasn’t really dead, so it only looked like a miracle. Jesus raised the dead. First time we know of that he did that.

The centurion’s servant—and his surprising faith.

by K.W. Leslie, 28 May 2018

Matthew 8.5-13, Luke 7.1-10.

Luke tells this story after Jesus’s sermon on the plain, and Matthew after his Sermon on the Mount—but curing an infectious man first. Mark doesn’t tell it. And John… tells a whole other story, although certain Christians try to sync it together with this one. But not well.

The story begins with Jesus again returning to his home base of Kfar Nahum, and in Matthew encountering the local centurion; in Luke hearing from local elders about this centurion. Y’might know a centurion was what the Romans called the captain in charge of a century, 100 soldiers. I don’t know whether all 100 were stationed in Kfar Nahum, or spread out over multiple cities in the province; it all depended on how far the Romans felt they needed to clamp down on the people.

What we do know is this particular centurion had a home in town, and an employee who was either suffering greatly, or dying. Luke calls him a slave who was éntimos/“held in high regard.” Ancient slaves were either debtors, convicts, or had lost a war, and were bought and worked as punishment. Attitudes towards them are significantly different than American attitudes when slavery was legal here: Slaves were still considered fellow human beings. The centurion held his slave in high regard either because he was a good guy, a good worker, or had a valuable skillset. We don’t know which. Matthew calls him a servant, and maybe that’s how the Roman thought of him.

So the slave’s illness was enough to bring to the attention of a rabbi well-known for curing the sick.

Matthew 8.5-7 KWL
5 On returning himself to Kfar Nahum,
a centurion came to Jesus and encouraged him to help him,
6 saying, “Master, my servant has been bedridden in my home, paralyzed by terrible suffering.”
7 Jesus told him, “I will come cure him.”
 
Luke 7.1-6 KWL
1 When Jesus finished putting all his words in the people’s ears,
he returned to Kfar Nahum.
2 A certain centurion’s slave who had an illness was near dying.
The slave was highly esteemed by the centurion.
3 Hearing about Jesus, the centurion sent him Judean elders,
asking him, since he’d come, if he might cure his slave.
4 Those who came to Jesus encouraged him earnestly, saying this:
“The one for whom you’ll do this is worthy.
5 For he loves our people, and built us our synagogue.”
6A Jesus went with them.

In both cases Jesus had no problem with going to the centurion’s house to cure the slave. Now, compare our Lord’s attitude with that of Simon Peter, who admitted he still thought of gentiles as unclean when the centurion Cornelius called him to Caesarea. Ac 10.28 Jesus was happy to go; Peter had to first see a vision about butchering unclean animals. Ac 10.9-16 Why Peter hadn’t adopted his Master’s attitude about gentiles, I’m not sure. My guess is he had some very old prejudices, and they took a while to break off him. Paul still had to fight him on it, some 20 years later. Ga 2.11-14 But I digress.

Notice how Matthew describes the centurion and Jesus having a personal conversation, but Luke has the centurion send some of the presvytérus/“elders” to Jesus with a recommendation. These’d be the mature believers in the religious community, the Pharisees who probably founded their synagogue, ’cause synagogues are a Pharisee thing. They told Jesus this guy had built their synagogue—so we’re talking a believer who was willing to put his money into his faith. Worthy by their standards; maybe by Jesus’s too. In any event, off they went.

The Twelve and the miracles.

by K.W. Leslie, 21 May 2018

Mark 6.12-13, Luke 9.6.

Of Jesus’s students, he assigned 12 of them to be apostles, “one who’s been sent out,” and eventually he did send ’em out to preach the gospel, cure the sick, and exorcise unclean spirits.

And that’s exactly what they did.

Mark 6.12-13 KWL
12 Going out, the apostles preached that people should repent.
13 The apostles were throwing out many demons, anointing many sick people with olive oil—and they were curing them.
 
Luke 9.6 KWL
6 Coming out, the apostles passed through the villages,
evangelizing and curing the sick everywhere.

Yep, all of them. Even Judas Iscariot.

And here’s where we slam into a wall with a lot of Christians. Because they cannot fathom how these apostles went out and cured the sick and exorcised evil spirits.

They’ll grudgingly acknowledge that the apostles did it. The gospels totally say so, and who are they to doubt the gospels? But y’see, their hangups come from the fact they have a lot of theological baggage about how miracles work, how the Holy Spirit empowers people, when the Holy Spirit historically empowered people, and the fact miracles seem to have nothing to do with the apostles’ maturity level: Once they were done doing these mighty acts, they came back to follow Jesus, and seemed to be the same foolish kids they always were.

Oh, and we can’t leave out Judas Iscariot. Christians really don’t like the idea Judas was curing the sick and casting out devils. Since he was one of the Twelve, and since these verses imply he did as the others of the Twelve did, it means Judas did miracles. And this, many Christians cannot abide. I remember one movie in particular where Judas specifically did no miracles; he lacked faith, so Simon the Canaanite, whom Judas was paired up with, Mt 10.4 did ’em all. ’Cause later Judas turned traitor and appears to have gone apostate—so Christians don’t want him having power, and balk at the idea the Holy Spirit really entrusted him with any such thing. It violates their sense of karma.

First thing we gotta do is put down the baggage and accept the scriptures: Jesus sent out his apostles, young as they were, green as they were, to go do supernatural acts of power. Which they did. We can debate the how and the why, but none of this hashing out should violate the fact they did the stuff. If it does, we’re doing theology backwards, and wrong.

Sending out the Twelve.

by K.W. Leslie, 14 May 2018

Mark 6.7-11, Matthew 10.1-15, Luke 9.1-5.

I’ve previously written on the Twelve, the guys among Jesus’s students whom he designated apostle, “one who’s been sent out,” whom he actually did send out once or twice before he returned to the Father. Here we reach the point in the gospels where he sent ’em out. Mark puts it right after teaching in Nazareth, Matthew after Jesus commented the workers are few, and Luke after curing Jair’s daughter.

Mark 6.7 KWL
Jesus summoned the Twelve, and began to send them out in twos.
He gave them power over unclean spirits.
 
Matthew 10.1 KWL
Summoning 12 of his students, Jesus gave them power over unclean spirits,
so they could throw them out, and cure every illness and every disease.
 
Luke 9.1-2 KWL
1 Calling together the Twelve, Jesus gave them power,
authority over all demons, and ability to cure disease.
2 Jesus sent them to preach God’s kingdom and to treat the sick.

Matthew even goes on to list the particular 12 students:

Matthew 10.2-8 KWL
2 These are the names of the 12 apostles:
First Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother. James bar Zavdi and John his brother.
3 Philip and Bartholemew. Thomas and Matthew the taxman.
James bar Alphaeus and Levvaios surnamed Thaddaeus.
4 Simon the Canaanite and Judas the Kerioti—who also turned Jesus in.
5 These are the Twelve Jesus sent, and he gave orders to them,
saying, “You shouldn’t go down the gentile road, nor enter Samaritan towns.
6 Rather, go to the lost sheep of Isarel’s house.
7 Go preach, saying this: ‘Heaven’s kingdom has come near!’
8 Cure the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Throw out demons.
You took it freely; give it freely!

And off they went to preach the kingdom.

’Cause prior to this point, Jesus had singled out the Twelve as his particular apprentices. They were meant to observe everything he did, learn what he preached, watch how he threw out evil spirits so they could do it themselves, and otherwise follow his example. Mk 3.14-15 Because that is what he expected of them.

And it’s what he expects of all his students. Us included. He didn’t make us Christians so we could bask in his salvation, then do nothing more. We’re to proclaim his kingdom, same as he. We’re to drive out evil spirits and cure the sick, same as he. We’re to do good deeds, same as he. We’re to be Christ to the world—while meanwhile Christ is representing us to the Father, getting us equipped, and preparing for his own invasion.

The Twelve were never meant to be Jesus’s only apostles, you know.

Short-staffed for the big harvest.

by K.W. Leslie, 11 May 2018

Matthew 9.35-38, Luke 10.2.

I’ve ranted quite often, and written regularly, about the fact the majority of Christians aren’t religious. We believe in Jesus and expect him to save us, but following him is another deal altogether: We don’t. We figure we don’t have to; that because we’re not saved by good deeds, there’s no point in doing any. Even though there’s so very much for us to do—so very much God wants to include us in—we sit things out, figuring God can do it himself, or even expects to do it himself. Meanwhile he’s waiting for his people to obey, and getting really annoyed at us that we don’t. And so the stuff doesn’t get done.

’Twas ever thus. Jesus knew from experience. When he ministered to the people of the Galilee, that’s what he found. People who needed to be ministered to, but who never had been, because the Pharisees had the bad habit of only taking care of those they deemed worthy, or only tending to their own. Which which meant they didn’t venture outside their narrow communities to help the truly needy. That’s why Jesus kept running into so many people who were demonized: If the Pharisees had done their job, had been compassionate like their LORD, the locals wouldn’t have been turning to witch-doctors to get cured—and the witch-doctors wouldn’t have been able to put all those critters in ’em.

Fact is, the people didn’t know God cared. They didn’t know God loved them, and wanted to make them his people. They were lost, scared, confused, looking for hope, and didn’t know where to find it. Same as people today.

Jesus went out and found them, and found them everywhere. And even though he’s Jesus, empowered by the unlimited resources of the Holy Spirit, it’s still too big a job for only one man. He said as much to his students.

Matthew 9.35-38 KWL
35 Jesus went round all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, curing every disease and illness.
36 Seeing the crowds, Jesus had compassion for them:
They were mistreated and thrown away, like sheep which had no pastor.
37 Jesus told his students, “The harvest is truly great—and so few workers!
38 So beg the Master of the harvest, so he can send workers into his harvest.”

Jesus later repeated this when he sent out his 72 apostles to do some of this work:

Luke 10.2 KWL
Jesus told them, “The harvest is truly great—and so few workers!
So beg the Master of the harvest, so he can send workers into his harvest.”

Because if people aren’t gonna get off their butts on their own and do their part, the Holy Spirit is gonna have to light a fire under us and get us off our butts. So we have to pray: “God, bring us more workers!” We always need more, because there’s no shortage of lost and needy people.

Jesus visits his homeland.

by K.W. Leslie, 10 May 2018

Mark 6.1-6, Matthew 13.53-58, Luke 4.16-30.

Luke puts this story right at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, right after he got tempted by Satan and gathered some students. It sounds like the right spot for it—if you’re gonna start teaching, you do it in your hometown, right?—but it’s not really. Because it seems Jesus already had a reputation as a teacher and faith-healer, which he got from somewhere… like the other synagogues and towns where he taught.

Mark has it after Jesus cured Jair’s daughter, and Matthew has it after Jesus shared some parables. It begins with Jesus going to his patrída/“fatherland,” or as Luke nails it down, Nazareth, the town he grew up in. Friday evening after sundown, he taught in synagogue.

Mark 6.1-2 KWL
1 Jesus went out from Kfar Nahum to his homeland. His students followed him.
2A When Sabbath came, Jesus began to teach in synagogue…
 
Matthew 13.53-54 KWL
53 When Jesus finished these parables, this happened:
He left there, 54A went to his homeland, and taught in their synagogue.
 
Luke 4.16-21 KWL
16 Jesus came to Nazareth, where he was raised.
By his custom, he entered synagogue on the Sabbath day, and arose to read.
17 Jesus was given the book of the prophet Isaiah.
Unrolling the bible, he found the place where it’s written:
18 “The Lord’s Spirit is upon me because he anointed me to evangelize the poor.
He sent me to proclaim forgiveness to captives, and restored sight to the blind.
To send away the shattered in forgiveness,
19 to proclaim a year of the Lord’s acceptance.” Is 61.1-2
20 Closing the bible and returning it to the assistant, Jesus sat to teach.
Every eye in the synagogue was staring at him.
21 He began to tell them this: “This scripture has been fulfilled today, in your ears.”

Luke gives us more of a glimpse of synagogue custom: The men stood round the podium up front. (The women stood in back, sometimes behind a partition, sometimes not, and had to be quiet ’cause synagogue was for men.) The teacher would stand to read the bible, ’cause respect. Then the teacher sat down and interpreted what he’d just read. The men would ask him questions about his interpretation—sometimes to understand him better, sometimes to challenge it.

Well, Jesus just gave ’em something challenging. He claimed Isaiah’s statement about what God had sent him to do, also applied to himself.

Yeah, let’s look at Isaiah. The guys who wrote the New Testament tended to quote only part of a verse, partly ’cause they wanted to save papyrus, partly ’cause they expected their readers to know the rest of it—or to unscroll a bible and read the rest of it. They didn’t quote it out of context; we do that. So it’s unlikely Jesus only read the first two verses of Isaiah 61: He read the whole chapter, and maybe chapter 62 too. I’ll quote a little bit more than Luke did:

Isaiah 61.1-4 KWL
1 My master LORD’s Spirit is upon me because the LORD anointed me to bring news to the needy.
He sent me to bandage the brokenhearted,
call captives to freedom, release to those in chains,
2 to call a year of favor from the LORDand a day of revenge from our God.
To comfort all who mourn, 3 and to set an end to mourning in Zion:
to give them a fine headcovering instead of ash,
oil of joy instead of mourning, clothing of praise instead of a dim spirit.
God wants to call them righteous oaks, God’s planting, his glory.
4 They built ancient ruins, abandoned by the first people.
Now they’re building cities anew—the generations-old abandoned ruins.

And so on. Israel gets restored, the gentiles come to know Israel and their God, blessings and peace and so on forevermore. And it all starts with Jesus. So, y’know, good news!

Except the locals had their doubts: It all starts with this guy?

Curing a bleeder.

by K.W. Leslie, 09 May 2018

Mark 5.25-34, Matthew 9.20-22, Luke 8.43-48.

Smack in the middle of the story of curing Jair’s daughter, where Jesus was on the way to Jair’s house, a woman snuck up behind him, touched him, and the Holy Spirit cured her of an ailment.

I know; you thought Jesus cured her, right? But if you know the story already, you recall Jesus didn’t do a thing. Wasn’t his idea to cure her—and yet she got cured. People naïvely presume this is because Jesus was so charged with special healing power, anyone who touched him would get zapped. But that’s not how miracles work at all. Jesus did things by the power of the Holy Spirit, Ac 10.38 same as everybody. She was cured because somebody chose to cure her—and that’d be the Holy Spirit.

Traditionally the woman’s been known as St. Veronica, even though her name never comes up in the bible. Doesn’t matter. Art and movies tend to depict her as an old woman; after all she had been suffering more than a decade. But Jesus called her thygátir/“daughter,” which means he was older than she. Possibly she’d suffered this illness all her life. Certainly all the life of the 12-year-old girl Jesus was planning to heal. But as a gyní/“woman” in Jesus’s culture, she was at least 13, she hadn’t suffered it all her life anyway.

We also don’t know what Veronica’s ailment was. Here’s the entirety of what the gospels say about it:

Mark 5.25-26 KWL
25 For 12 years, a woman had a bloodflow, 26 and had suffered greatly under many witch-doctors,
spending everything she had, and never improving. Instead she was much worse.
Matthew 9.20 KWL
Look: A woman suffering a 12-year bloodflow,
coming up behind them, grabbed the tassel of Jesus’s robe,
Luke 8.43 KWL
For 12 years, a woman who had a bloodflow, who all her life spent lavishly on witch-doctors,
wasn’t better, with no one to cure her.

Commentators speculate it might’ve been related to her menstrual cycle, though you notice they’ve no basis at all for saying so. But if it did begin at puberty, she would’ve been in her twenties when the Spirit cured her.

In any event her treatments had bled her dry as well. People in the United States are pretty familiar with the idea of healthcare emptying your bank account, so we can kinda relate. (Well, unless we’re rich.)

Other than asking God to cure her, Veronica’s only resort was yatrón, a word the KJV (and many current translations still) translate “physicians.” But remember: Nobody practiced the scientific method back then. These guys didn’t know jack squat about medicine. They practiced folk remedies, some of which were downright silly. Sometimes they assumed evil spirits were the problem (’cause hey, sometimes they were), and tried to take ’em out of you. Sometimes a gentile yatrós might even try to put one of those spirits in you, on the grounds it might cure you—and that was why so many unwell people also needed Jesus to perform an exorcism. But basically these guys were witch doctors, not physicians.

So all these quacks could do was take her money, promise they had a method which provided relief, but she’d get no usable results. Like Luke said, there was no one to cure her. So, same as most people of that day, she had no other recourse but God. And sometimes our doctors can’t treat us, or we don’t like how they treat us, so in desperation we try non-western medicine… which means we’ve resorted to the very same “physicians” Veronica tried out, who took her money but had nothing to show for it. Again, we can relate.

Jesus raises a dead girl. (Or was she only asleep?)

by K.W. Leslie, 08 May 2018

Mark 5.21-24, 35-43, Matthew 9.18-19, 23-26, Luke 8.40-42, 49-56.

There’s a story in the middle of this story, about a woman with a bloodflow. I’ll get to it later.

Mark and Luke tell this story after Jesus’s side trip to the Dekapolis, and Matthew puts it after Jesus taught on fasting.

Mark 5.21-43 KWL
21 After crossing back over the lake in the boat,
a great crowd again gathered around Jesus. He was on the shore.
22 One of the synagogue presidents, named Jaïr, saw him, fell at his feet,
23 and urged him to come with him, saying this: “My daughter is at the point of death.
If you come lay your hands on her, you can save her; she can live.”
24 Jesus went with him. The great crowd followed—and was crushing him.
 
Matthew 9.18-19 KWL
18 While Jesus said these things, look: A ruler came and knelt before him,
saying this: “My daughter died just now, but come lay hands on her and she’ll live.”
19 Getting up, Jesus followed him, as did his students.
 
Luke 8.40-42 KWL
40 Upon Jesus’s return, the crowd greeted him, for they were all expecting him.
41 Look: A man named Jair came. This man had become president of the synagogue.
He fell at Jesus’s feet and prayed that he come to his house,
42 for he had an only-begotten 12-year-old daughter, and she was dying.
As Jesus was going away with Jair, the crowd was choking him.

Maybe you caught the discrepancy; most Christians totally miss it. In Mark and Luke the girl’s at the point of death. In Matthew she’s already died.

Changes the story a little; there’s no longer any sense of urgency in getting to the house before death takes her. Not that curing illness, or curing death, makes any difference to Jesus. Does to doctors—and to us, because we have a bad habit of projecting our limitations upon God. We gotta not do that. Jesus can cure anything. Death too.

But the girl being dead already is why Matthew doesn’t include this bit in mid-story about people running up to tell them she’s died. Didn’t need to.

Mark 5.35-36 KWL
35 While they were speaking, some came against the synagogue president,
saying this: “Your daughter died. Why keep bothering the teacher?”
36 Jesus refused to listen to their message, and told the synagogue president, “No fear. Just trust me.”
 
Luke 8.49-50 KWL
49 While Jesus was still speaking, someone from the synagogue president’s house came,
saying this: “Your daughter has died. You needn’t bother the teacher.”
50 Jesus, hearing this, told Jair, “No fear. Just trust me: She’ll be saved.”

So was the girl already dead or not? Obviously most Christians vote not—because it’s a more dramatic story that way. But that’s not enough of a reason to pick one gospel over the other. I lean towards the idea she wasn’t dead yet, mainly because there’s no good reason to make it up. “Don’t be afraid; just trust me” is a common theme in the gospels regardless.

Killing the pigs.

by K.W. Leslie, 07 May 2018

Mark 5.11-20, Matthew 8.30-34, Luke 8.32-39.

Picking up where I left off: Jesus and his students traveled to the Dekapolis, a province (well, more like 10 provinces) in northern Israel inhabited by Syrian Greeks, located on the far side of the lake. They encountered a man (Matthew says two of ’em) infested with the sort of evil spirits which pagan Greeks worshiped as minor gods, a.k.a. demons. The spirits were making the poor demoniac’s life hell. They realized Jesus wouldn’t tolerate what they were doing to the man, and would order them out of there. But they had an idea, which maybe they could get Jesus to go along with.

Mark 5.11-13 KWL
11 There was a great herd of pigs grazing near the hill.
12 The demons begged Jesus, saying, “Send us to the pigs, so we can enter them!”
13 Jesus allowed them, and coming out, the unclean spirits entered the pigs.
The herd stampeded to the cliff over the lake—like 2,000!—and drowned in the lake.
Matthew 8.30-32 KWL
30 Far off from them was a herd of many pigs, grazing.
31 The demons begged Jesus, saying, “If you throw us out, send us to the herd of pigs.”
32 Jesus told them, “Get out.” Coming out, they went off into the pigs.
Look, the whole herd rushed off the seacliff and died in the waters.
Luke 8.32-33 KWL
32 There was a great herd of pigs grazing on the hill.
The demons begged Jesus so he’d send them to enter the pigs
Jesus allowed them, 33 and coming out of the person, the demons entered the pigs.
The herd rushed off the cliff into the marsh, and drowned.

You might remember devout Jews don’t eat pork. It’s because the LORD identified any animals which aren’t ruminant, which do have split hooves, as ritually unclean. And God specifically singled out pigs, Lv 11.7 because nearly every other culture raises and eats them, and the Hebrews might get the idea a popular food animal might be an exception.

No, ritual uncleanliness does not mean pigs are sinful, nor that eating them is a sin. The only consequence in the scripture for eating an unclean animal is you couldn’t worship. You’d first have to baptize yourselves and wait till sundown. Realistically, if your only worship consisted of going to temple three times a year, Ex 23.14 technically you could eat pork all year long, abstain during the temple festivals, and you were good. Well, not that good. But good enough for worship, which is why certain Jews eat treyf (unclean things) all year round, and only abstain for the holidays.

But Pharisees strived to stay in a constant state of ritual cleanliness. Their custom dictated that you had to be ritually clean to go to synagogue, and they wanted to be prepared to enter the synagogue at any given time. (Lessons went on all week long, y’know.) So this meant a constant state of ritual cleanliness, which means no pork ever. In fact the idea of a herd of pigs, raised on land that was historically part of Israel’s covenant, would’ve bugged Pharisees greatly.

Anyway some commentators figure this fact puts a new spin on the story: Here are some animals which shouldn’t even have been in Israel anyway. So Jesus likely had no qualms about the demons destroying them, and even permitted them because he wanted the pigs dead. Go ahead demons; purge Israel of its swine.

Okay, now back up a few yards and let’s think about how contrary to Jesus’s character this interpretation is.

The mourning of Jerusalem’s daughters.

by K.W. Leslie, 20 March 2018

Luke 23.26-31.

Only Luke tells this part of the story.

Luke 23.26-31 KWL
26 As the Romans led Jesus away, they grabbed Simon, a certain Cyrenian coming from the fields,
and they put the crossbeam on him to carry behind Jesus.
27 Many crowds of people followed Jesus.
The mourning women among them were also lamenting him.
28 Turning to the women, Jesus said, “Jerusalem’s daughters, don’t weep for me.
But weep for your own. For your children. 29 Look, the time’s coming when they’ll say,
‘The sterile, wombs which never begat children, breasts which never fed, are awesome!’
30 Then they’ll start ‘to tell the mountains, “Fall on us!” and the hills, “Bury us!” ’ Ho 18.1
31 For if they do this when the wood is moist, what’ll happen when it’s dry?”

Some teachers never can stop teaching. Even when they’re being dragged off to be crucified.

Various Christians don’t know what to make of this passage, so they skip it. Which is easy to do when there are so many other horrors to focus on when it comes to Jesus’s death. Skip the message to Jerusalem’s daughters and focus on Simon having to carry Jesus’s crossbeam, or Jesus getting nailed up between two insurgents. Lessons can easily get lost in the shuffle.

But St. John Paul made this lesson its own station of the cross, probably ’cause he figured it was worth zooming in on this particular event. Meditating on what the women were feeling. Meditating on how Jesus felt about that. Meditating on what he told them, and why he said it.

So let’s get into why he said it.

Great tribulation in less than 40 years.

Jesus was crucified in the year 33 of our era. In the year 66, the Romans finally had enough of Judean insurrection and sent in the army to put a stop to it, once and for all.

The cause of the insurrection? Judeans who wouldn’t recognize Jesus is their Messiah and join the Christians. Instead they kept waiting for some other king to save them from the Romans and lead their people to greatness. Someone violent and wrathful—kinda like they were!—and eager to call down legions of angels to smite the Romans in precisely the way Jesus wouldn’t. Mt 26.53 They kept embracing fake Messiahs, kept irritating the Romans, and kept presuming God was gonna send him some other savior… ’cause they didn’t really care for the Nazarene. Too much grace. Not enough rage.

So what d’you think would happen? Right: First the Jerusalem prefect started arresting senior Judean leaders. This turned into full-on revolt. The legate of Syria sent in his army; the Judeans defeated ’em. Emperor Nero sent in his top general, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, and over the course of four years, Vespasianus (later known as Emperor Vespasian) and his son (later Emperor Titus) defeated the rebels, laid siege to Jerusalem, and destroyed the temple. Judea was flattened, Jerusalem laid waste, hundreds of thousands crucified, the Sadducees dead, and the Jews scattered round the world yet again.

Jesus not only knew this was coming, Mk 13.1-2 but warned his followers to watch out, then run for the hills. Mk 10.14-20 And not to confuse it with his second coming, Mk 10.21-23 for that comes later. Mk 10.24-27 Not that plenty of Christians don’t still confuse this period of great tribulation with his second coming, or imagine Jesus’s prophecy hasn’t happened yet, but has yet to happen in our own future. But that’s only because they’re following certain self-proclaimed “prophecy scholars” instead of Jesus. He did warn us about false teachers, y’know.

So that’s what this was. Jesus was prophesying, yet again, that terrible stuff was ahead. Jerusalem’s daughters shouldn’t be weeping for him, but weeping for the future that their leaders were dragging them into. It was gonna be awful.

Mark 13.17-20 KWL
17 “How sad for pregnant women and nursing mothers, in those days!
18 Pray it doesn’t happen during winter.
19 Those days will be tribulation like it’s never been.
From the first thing God created, to now, it’s never been this bad.
20 If the Lord didn’t cut off the days, no flesh would survive.
But he chose to cut off the days because of his chosen people.”

Some of the reason “prophecy scholars” claim Jesus has to be talking about events in our future, is because they can’t imagine the events of the Jewish-Roman War were the worst suffering that’s ever been. But you notice Jesus didn’t say that it’s the worst suffering ever—only the worst it’s been from creation till his day. It’s fair to say humanity’s committed much worse atrocities since, but Jesus wasn’t talking about since.

And Jesus didn’t want this.

Matthew 23.37-38 KWL
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, slayer of prophets, stoner of those I sent you.
So many times I’ve wanted to gather your children together, like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
You didn’t. 38 Look, your nest is left empty.”

He wanted what he’s always wanted: For them to be his people, and for him to be their God. Ex 6.7, Lv 26.12, Jr 30.22 Well, their king, walking among them in a way they never imagined he would. Still, he wanted a relationship, and they rejected him. So their rejection would bring them destruction. He didn’t have to lift a finger to judge them; disaster would come on its own.

But it wasn’t any of these people—the crowds who grieved for him, the women who lamented for him—who were complicit in his death and Judea’s destruction. They weren’t in leadership. They had no power to change anything. Judea wasn’t a democracy, y’know. Still, when the great tribulation came, if they didn’t flee for the hills along with the Christians, they were doomed along with the rest. So as they lamented for Jesus, he lamented for them.

Like Hosea: History repeating itself.

A number of bibles utterly miss the fact Jesus quoted Hosea in verse 30. They notice people in Revelation likewise call the mountains to foll on them, Rv 6.16 but—largely because people really need to read the Prophets and don’t—they don’t catch that both Jesus and John were referring to a 7-century-old prophecy about the coming destruction of Ephraim, the land of northern Israel, ruled by the king of Samaria.

Hosea 10.1-8 KWL
1 Israel’s a premium vine. Its fruit is just like it—it’s abundant fruit.
It has many good altars in the land. Good watchtowers.
2 Nowadays its minds are full of themselves. They’re guilty.
God breaks their altars’ necks. He lays the watchtowers waste.
3 For now they say, “We’ve no king. We don’t respect the LORD. What would a king do for us?
4 They speak words, swear empty oaths, cut covenants. They sprout judgment like weeds in a field’s furrows.
5 For the cows of Beth Aven, they fear their neighbor Samaria, as they mourn for it and its people,
and its priests rejoice over it, over the glory which was removed from it.
6 As for its people, they’re carried to Assyria as an offering to Assyria’s king.
Ephraim is taken. Israel is ashamed of its counsel. 7 Samaria’s king is ruined like a stick left in the water.
8 Aven’s high worship sites—Israel’s sins—are destroyed. Thorns and thistles grow on their altars.
They say to the mountains, “Hide us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.”

Like the people of Jesus’s day, the Ephraimites and Samarians presumed they were wealthy and safe, ’cause they followed their gods and had strong fortifications. Didn’t follow the LORD any. Didn’t really follow their king either. Sound familiar?

What happened next? The cycle reached the point where their enemies invaded. Israel’s foes, in this case the Assyrian Empire, got to be successful against ’em: They wouldn’t turn to the LORD when times were good, so he’d sit on the sidelines when times got very, very bad. The Assyrians invaded Ephraim, captured the king, rounded up the inhabitants of the major cities, and scattered ’em all over the empire.

Nowadays we call ’em “the 10 lost tribes,” although the only actual lost Israelis were the deported city dwellers. The survivors either fled to southern Israel, i.e. Judah/Judea; or they intermarried with the people the Assyrians relocated to Israel, and became the Samaritans; or they rejoined their fellow Israelis when the Babylonians conquered and scattered Judah two centuries later.

It’s the survivors of whom Hosea made the comment, “They say to the mountains, ‘Hide us,’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us.’ ” Ho 10.8 They were running for their lives—running for the hills, to hide in them, same as David ben Jesse and various other fugitives had done throughout Israeli history. But they were also in despair. Hence they really wouldn’t mind if the caves they were hiding in, just happened to cave in on ’em.

’Cause tribulation’s gonna get bad. If the Romans were crucifying peaceful Nazarene prophets during the relatively good times, imagine what they’d do during the bad times. Or as Jesus put it, “If they do this when the wood is moist, what’ll happen when it’s dry?” Lk 23.31

It’s not a happy message Jesus had for the women. But be fair; he was having just the worst day.

Vinegar to drink.

by K.W. Leslie, 13 March 2018

Mark 15.23, 26, Matthew 27.33-34, 48, Luke 23.36, John 19.28-30

Back when David was in deep doo-doo, Ps 69.2 he wrote Psalm 69. More griping about his enemies. But when he talked about his comforters, Ps 69.20 he commented,

Psalm 69.21 KWL
They gave me bitter food, and for my thirst, they made me drink vinegar.

It’s a memorable idea, and one which no doubt the authors of the gospels thought of when Jesus was getting crucified. ’Cause Jesus didn’t wanna drink what they provided.

Our culture might be unaware: Back then, you didn’t drink the water. You never knew where it came from, and rarely was it pure. Fastest way to get dysentery or cholera. So the ancients drank wine, either full-strength or watered-down. (Or beer, if your culture made beer.) The alcohol killed any bacteria. Ignore all those teetotalers who claim “wine” back then was actually grape juice: Grape juice was as potentially harmful as water. It needed to be wine.

The gospels aren’t consistent in how they describe the wine Jesus was offered. Mark called it myrrh-wine and Matthew called it wine with holís/“bile.” For Luke and John, it was really old wine, which both of ’em straight-up called óxos/“vinegar.”

Mark 15.22-23 KWL
22 They brought Jesus to Gulgálta Place (i.e. Skull Place).
23 They were giving Jesus myrrh-wine, which he didn’t take.
 
Matthew 27.33-34 KWL
33 Coming to the place called Gulgálta, called Skull Place, 34 they gave Jesus wine to drink—
with bile mixed in, and on tasting it he didn’t want to drink.
 
Luke 23.36 KWL
They mocked him. The soldiers who’d come were bringing him vinegar…

John states they added hyssop, but the KJV changes John’s account to “[a branch] of hyssop,” Jn 19.29 KJV to sync it up with Mark and Matthew’s account of putting the wine in a sponge, putting the sponge on a reed (or a hyssop stick, I suppose), and offering it to Jesus. But hyssop is also a bitter extract, and may be what Matthew meant by bile. I dunno.

Mark 15.36 KWL
One of the runners, filling a sponge of vinegar, putting it on a reed, gave Jesus a drink,
saying, “Let me do this; we might see if Elijah comes to take him.”
 
Matthew 27.48 KWL
One runner quickly left them: Taking a sponge full of vinegar, putting it on a reed, he gave Jesus a drink.
 
John 19.28-30 KWL
28 After this Jesus, knowing everything was now finished,
said to fulfill the scripture, “I thirst.”
29 A full jar of vinegar was sitting there.
So a sponge full of vinegar, with hyssop put on it, was brought to Jesus’s mouth.
30 When he tasted the vinegar, Jesus said, “It’s finished.”
He bent his head and handed over his spirit.

Yeah, the soldiers and their runners offered Jesus vinegar more than once.

Certain commentators claim the myrrh in the wine was meant to be medicinal. Supposedly the Romans, feeling a little bad for their victims, wanted to numb them just a little to the excruciating pain of crucifixion. Man, is that optimistic of the commentators. Ask your local supplier of essential oils: Myrrh is no painkiller. It wasn’t even a folk-remedy painkiller. The ancients used it as perfume—to keep wounds and medicines from smelling bad. From there, moderns leap to the conclusion it was kind of an antiseptic—it kept wounds from getting infected and gangrenous, right? But it didn’t do that at all: It hid the smell of wounds which were getting septic. It made you worse, not better. Despite your favorite websites, myrrh has no proven purpose in medicine.

So what was it doing in the wine? Myrrh is bitter. (So’s hyssop.) It made the wine taste like bile. And when people taste bile, what do they do? They gag: It tastes like vomit. They’ll frequently even vomit.

Yep, it was the Romans’ sick little joke. The victims got thirsty and begged for wine… so you gave ’em myrrh-wine, and watched ’em freak out. Arguably that was why they put the vinegar in a sponge on a reed: It wasn’t because the crosses were impractically tall. It’s because the soldiers didn’t wanna get puked on.

Wasn’t Jesus thirsty?

Christians sometimes think there’s a serious discrepancy in the gospels’ stories of Jesus’s crucifixion. ’Cause in Mark and Matthew, Jesus refused to drink anything. But in John, he declared “I’m thirsty!” and drank the vinegar. Or wine, depending on the translation—and upon whether the translators could imagine Jesus willingly drinking vinegar.

I’ve heard interpreters claim Jesus refused the wine because he didn’t wanna be numbed. He wanted to really suffer all the pain he was going through, with senses entirely intact. (Or as intact as they could be, considering all the blood loss.) He was dying for our sins here, and he wanted sin to suffer on its way down. So no alcohol, no myrrh, no nothing. Bring on the pain!

There’s a bothersome amount of sadomasochism in this interpretation, which says all sorts of creepy things about the preachers. There’s plenty of suffering involved in public rejection, flogging, and crucifixion. Jesus was going down hard. Bad wine and a mild sedative weren’t gonna make things better.

But again, that wasn’t the Romans’ motive at all. They weren’t trying to be light on their victims. They figured every crucified person was an annoyance or danger to Rome, and deserved what they were getting. They’d just beaten Jesus up for fun. They were still having fun at his expense, gambling for his clothes, mocking the title which Pilatus had fastened to the cross. Myrrh-wine wasn’t a mercy. It was more sick fun.

So you can see why Jesus initially wouldn’t touch the stuff. Of course he was thirsty. But not that thirsty.

That is, till the very end. John said he decided to drink the vinegar to fulfill the scriptures. Jn 19.28 Maybe he meant the Psalms passage, where David’s enemies made him drink vinegar. But maybe it’s also this passage:

Mark 14.24-25 KWL
24 Jesus told them, “This is the blood of my relationship, poured out for many.
25 Amen: I promise you I’ll never drink of the fruit of the vine again—
till that day when I drink it new, in God’s kingdom.”

I admit that’s a stretch though. John never quoted that statement, and you know he totally would have if it were relevant. I have nonetheless heard it preached that Jesus was willing to drink the wine because it was finished: He was dying, God’s kingdom was coming into the world, and all things were being made new. He drank it in victory… though it sure didn’t look like any victory at the time. But meh; I don’t buy it.

Is there an inconsistency between Jesus’s declaration, “I’ll never drink of the fruit of the vine again,” and drinking the vinegar? Maybe. But I expect, and most Christian expect, Jesus was speaking of proper wine. The festal stuff, which you drink at Passovers and holidays. Not the awful swill the Romans were providing.

In any event he probably did have the Psalms passage in mind when he drank the vinegar. Here the Romans were, offering him phony comfort. But it was deliberately made bitter, and was just another form of torment.

So Jesus put it off till the very last minute, did the deed and fulfilled the verse… then gave up the ghost.