Bible Topics

The whole Biblical picture is divided into two contracts or agreements. The first is called the OT and the central question is "Who Is God?" All the writings of the OT stress more and more that he is a Father. Then Jesus Christ comes and he shows how this Fatherhood of God should affect people. He shows how to establish the Brotherhood of Family of mankind. Jesus dies and the first Christians establish the "Holy Spirit" or the "sharing" with each other necessary to manifest the Brotherhood of mankind in the Fatherhood of God.

We don't need any special church or ritual. We just have to make sure that the "community" of mankind is really a "community," a sharing with each other. The first Christians did this. Then Constantine set the church free and the static, separate structure arose and gradually destroyed the "community."

OT develops different aspects of the Fatherhood of God. The Gospels tell the story of Christ's plan to establish the Brotherhood of man. The gist of the Good News (Gospel) is how this Brotherhood is to be accomplished practically. This is Mt 5:1–13, the Beatitudes.

The notion of the "holy Breath" as contrast to the "tainted breath" of the Old Adam is almost spelled out in actual words in Luke.

Christ is on the cross. In Luke's Gospel he speaks three times. First, he asks that all his persecutors be forgiven. Then, he promises Paradise to the one thief. Then he says "Father, into your hands I put back my breath." With that he bowed his head and died.

He has died for the failure of the first Adam. Jesus gives back the breath that had been given him. Then he rises from the dead, and he has the "holy Breath" — the breath of the new Adam which he offers to all who accept him.

One of the first rules of Exegetic work is that a word has the same meaning in any given context unless the writer explicitly indicates change. The Greek word here is "to Pneuma" or the Hebrew "Ruah." There is absolutely no doubt about its meaning as referring to the actual breath which gives life or removes it.

Now the picture is completely rounded out. The work of the first Adam was thwarted by his disobedience and the punishment was death. The second Adam atones, gives back the breath, dies and gives new life with new, untainted breath to all who accept.

In Biblical circles, if I saw some hope of changing things or honest inquiry, I made my ideas known. If I saw Bishops, priests and other clergy who were frozen in place, I just walked off.

I finally resolved the Holy Spirit question about the speech of Gabriel to Zachary and Mary. Luke is pointing out that the plan of salvation began with the "new" or "Holy" breath of the new Adam, even though Jesus had the breath of the Old Adam until he died. Then on the cross Luke, and Luke alone, gives these "last words" — "Father, into your hands, I give back my breath." Jesus bowed his head and died. He rises with the Holy or new Breath of the new Adam, and this is the source of "power" in the Christian Koinonia.

I can tie the whole picture to the words "Bara, Son of Man, Holy Breath (Spirit), and koinonia." That does it all. The followers of Christ were to be fully conscious of the community that held them together, gave them stability and made them a force for good and social reform. They were to be constantly aware of themselves as the ekklesia, the Gathering, in every part of society.

I want to make clear the difference between "stories" of the Bible and western "History." The Semitic mind is not so much concerned with what happened or how it happened. The Semitic mind is always asking the question why. So whether Yahweh made all things from nothing and directly, or whether he set the process in motion and evolution did or does the rest is beyond the Bible writer's ken. He sees facts or makes up facts to make his point.

1. The Bible is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word but a collection of writings that were put together over a period of at least 12 centuries. All of the writings were handed down orally for centuries and finally, in the 10th century B.C., Solomon and his scholars decided to put the traditions in writing.

2. The Bible is Semitic history, not western history. This means that the writers are interested in the "Why" of events rather than the "what." In fact, if the facts don't fit the story, the facts can be changed, dropped or added to.

Yesterday, I worked on my composition "Who Is God?" As the OT ends, the picture is still not fully developed and the major problem is the suffering of a person who is really good. God's speech to Job in the final scene of the book gives the state of the picture at that time.

The New Testament picks up these ideas and develops the full picture of the Fatherhood of God by describing the Brotherhood of man and the way it is to be accomplished. Augustine is the bright boy who missed this picture. He took the Apocalypse of John, which described the Roman persecutions and what was to happen to the Romans, and applied it to the death of an individual person. This put the whole notion of punishment, terror, and hell-fire into theology. Over the centuries theologians and preachers drew on the hellfire and damnation picture and emasculated Christian teaching.

The unwed mother has been a subject of reproach in society among Jews and Christians. Chapter 4 of St. John's Gospel treats of a specific incident in the life of Christ. Jesus was at the well in Samaria. A "public" woman walked up. Jesus asked her for a drink of water. She was amazed that he would even talk to her. The Jewish leaders brought a "sinful" woman to Jesus for stoning according to the Mosaic Law. Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin among you throw the first stone." — They left!

Moses is the most influential leader of the OT and the man who has the most influence on the shaping of modern thought and action through the Ten Commandments.

The "Matthew group" thought so highly of Moses and his writings that the Jesus story according to Matthew is divided into 5 major parts to correspond to the Pentateuch. There is an intro and a conclusion to tie the whole story together, and constant reference to Moses to show how Jesus in his work and teaching fulfills what Moses started.

There is no doubt of the importance of Moses in the history of the world. The Bible account has added a bit of flourish to some of the details. For example, his very name, Moses, is the Egyptian word "mosis" which means "son." Most of the Egyptian rulers and leaders had the name of some god and "mosis" for a name. Examples are Tuthmosis, Ahmosis, Ramesis.

The Hebrews couldn't have such a name so they called him "Mosheh" or the one "drawn out" and referred it to the incident in his life as a baby. Moses as leader was called a "pillar of cloud" by day and the "pillar of light" by night. He protected the people against heat and darkness. He sat on Mt. Sinai or "jebel Musa" to develop the code that would serve as a basis for all their laws. He did such a good job that the same code is still the basis of all law and morality today.

Moses was a brilliant man but had a very short fuse! He could and did get angry, upset, disgusted, scared, and all at the same time.

Bible Stories is the accurate description of OT we studied or read in grade school. There was no attempt to present it as a history. The stories were told for the moral that each one presented. The entire Bible, Old and New, is written in this fashion. The only book that resembles western history is Acts.

The first person who goes beyond Moses is Jesus. He recalls what Moses taught and then carries the teaching a step further. This is why the Jewish leaders wanted Christ out of the way, and why the Jewish people were so vehemently opposed to the first Christians.

I used to think that the diet of "locusts and wild honey" was evidence of how John "roughed" it in the desert. Actually, both of these were considered a delicacy by the Egyptians. J.L. says they fried the locusts like a French fry and they made a nectar of the honey and let it age into an alcoholic drink. So the Bible story is saying that John did well for himself. He dressed in primitive clothes and was unshorn so he gave a startling appearance as he lambasted the wickedness of all, especially the leaders.

There is no statement in the NT about only one true church. As a matter of fact, all the communities founded by Peter and Paul were independently governed by the "elders" of the place. Several women are mentioned as leaders in the society of those days.

The Apostles' Creed is a summary of the beliefs in "Didache tun Apostolon" — The teachings of the Apostles, dated about 150–175 AD, says only "holy and universal." There is no mention of one church until after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Even then, the word "one" was not put in the Nicene Creed.

We have to get rid of the "divinity" of Jesus, the notion that "holy Spirit" is a person rather than the "Breath of the New Adam" which was given at the new creation.

At the Last Supper, Christ was talking about the "Passover Ritual." He said, "From now on this is to be a commemoration of my victory rather than the exodus from Egypt." The evening meal, the Eucharist, was exactly that — a happy "get-together" — a shared meal.

Christ's last words in Luke are, "Father, into your hands I put back my breath." Then he breathed out and bowed his head. The Old Adam had tainted that first breath, so the second Adam gave it back. Then he gave the Holy Breath as the gift of the new Adam. It's all there, word for word, in the Greek except that for centuries, the basic rules of reading were ignored. A word has one meaning in a given context unless the writer clearly demands another.

You asked when the change in the study of Sacred Scripture took place. Actually, at Trent in 1563. The Bible was called the handmaid of Theology. This was brought about by the rebellion of Luther and a lot of his companions. The theologians put Thomas Aquinas on the pedestal and the Bible would be used only as a secondary proof of the theological statement.

In 1911, the PIB was established in Rome. The profs and students were considered next door to heresy. M.L. LaGrange and the OP's started the L'Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem and literally told Rome and the Pope to "go to hell." For years they were considered heretics but no one in Rome would tackle them because of their scholarship. They published the Revue Biblique (RB) from 1890 onward. We had every issue in the library in Oc-oc and when they moved, the bastards burned the whole set.

No one ever read the RB in my time except myself. The finding of the Scrolls in 1947 and the work of men at CU in DC and the L'Ecole Biblique finally put the study of Sacred Scripture on the front burner. However, in 1952, when I started to teach in Oc-oc, there were only 3 of us in the whole state of Wisconsin with graduate study and degrees in Sacred Scripture.

Last night, you were talking about God and his meanness because of all the ills in the world. It is true, God, if he is omniscient, omnipotent, and all the other "Omni's" could have made this a paradise as is stated in the earliest picture. However, he wanted people to think for themselves, to work together, and discover the way to make nature and the world about us work for us.

It is no more unkind of God to allow people to be hurt because they have not learned enough than it is for you to let a child make a mistake in school or life so that he/she will learn from the mistake.

This process has worked well. The cooperation of scientists, doctors, educators, financiers, farmers, laborers has brought about untold benefits, and there are a lot more there. However, people and nations don't always work together. They are greedy, jealous, envious and downright mean. They cheat, lie, steal and kill to get everything for themselves. This antagonism, enmity, warring stalls or stops human progress in all fields until peace is restored.

God cannot be called mean or hateful or at fault if we want our freedom of choice. He could stop us but he would stifle all creativity. So it's plan A — cooperate with each other to achieve all the creative good available in the world.

As I ponder over your questions about God, I realize how often the question has been raised in the Bible, especially in the didactic literature. The entire book of Job is a discussion of this very point.

Job is a good man in every sense of the word and he has prospered marvelously. God looks at him as a real exemplar. Satan, the adversary or the evil enemy, is introduced. He laughs at the goodness of Job so Job is afflicted with every kind of loss. His three friends give long speeches on the hidden sins that Job must have committed. Finally, Job throws a challenge at God and God appears to answer his questions and objections. Job does not really get an answer because God stresses that the workings of the universe and the place of humans in that picture is too vast for the human mind to grasp and master all at one time.

In the New Testament, the writers do not treat the question directly. Christ stresses how people are to act toward each other in order to establish the true brotherhood or family of mankind. When the earth is brought to its "fulness" or "completeness" (to telos) then the Fatherhood of God will be truly understood and enjoyed.

Jesus had one concern: the establishment of the "brotherhood" or "family of mankind" in the everyday world. He did not preach a lot of dogmas, special philosophy or any ritual. Those are all "trappings" (not the Christian message) which have gradually usurped the real ideas of Christ.

I think the time will come when the true message will again be accepted and spread through the world on the modern media.

As we watched the first half of "Fiddler on the Roof," I was reviewing the history of the Jewish people from the beginning. How much of the Patriarchal story is fable and how much fact is hard to say. Most of the problem of dating comes from the centuries of taking the biblical years as absolute and starting the world in 4000 B.C.

For centuries, science said the world was much older but no accommodation was made. Then we finally admitted the manuscript evidence of the OT editings and placed the earliest writing in the time of Solomon in the 10th century B.C. We then turned to Egyptian history and realized the Hyksos or non-Egyptians ruled Egypt from 1650–1250. In 1250 B.C. the real Egyptians took over again and the foreigners were expelled or escaped.

The Exodus story starts at this time and much of the story is written like folklore. We know what the writers wanted to teach about the people and their relationship to Yahweh. We don't know what really happened.

The Maccabees story is told much like some of the tales of the settlers and native-Americans in this country. Then Israel comes into the Western world and the conflict between two mentalities continues. Israel succeeds and fails. They are accepted and persecuted. Now they want the land again.

I think it is absolutely essential to take each gospel story as it stands and avoid all the "harmonies." Then we take the terms on their biblical meaning. Jesus is son of God exactly as Adam, the chosen people, and "wise man" and King David were called "Sons of God." They had a special role to play in the plan of the World according to the Bible Story. The Holy Breath is the Breath of the new Adam to replace the "tainted breath" of the 1st Adam. The Pope is to be a "foundation." The church is to be "holy" and "universal" but nothing is said about "only one."

I was reading over the 3 sets of Beatitudes, yesterday. Paul has a set of 7 causes for happiness at the beginning of Ephesians. They are concerned primarily with the manner in which the Christian community is to form the New People of God by mingling with the world roundabout. The isolation of old Israel is to be abandoned.

John, in the Book of Revelation, describes how the people in Rome at the end of the first century are to establish their happiness in the midst of persecution. He was talking about the Trastevere section of Rome and the plight of those people because of their near-slave condition and the persecution by Roman society. Matthew broadens this notion of happiness in relation to the whole of mankind at all times. This happiness is not merely in a future heaven but is to be established right here on earth. All the conditions are spelled out.

It's a very pleasing and realistic picture if we ever return to the ideas and ideals of Jesus Christ as lived by the first Christians.

The central story of the human race is set by the Christian tradition in a cave or house in Bethlehem. Eastern and Western Christians do not quite agree on the basic story but agree on the fact. Jesus Christ was born. It's too bad the churchmen and theologians took a simple folk story based on the same kind of hero stories in the OT, and turned it into a western medical account. The worst idiocy was the translation of the word "parthenos" from the Greek. The word was reserved to Athena by the Greeks as the "Queen Mother" of all the gods. They built the "Parthenon" as her castle and throne. "Queen Mother" meant she sat at the right hand of Jupiter or Zeus as second in command.

This was the notion Matthew emphasized in his presentation of Jesus Christ, the King and his Kingdom. Luke stresses Mary as the mother of the savior and salvation. John takes a wholly different tack and sees Mary next to the New Adam as the New Eve.

The ideas and stories are marvelous but they are stories as in the OT beginnings. They are stories to tell "why" not "what."

Today is the feast of St. John, the Apostle. He is the man to whom a tremendous amount of our authentic tradition has been traced. He was a "Neaniskos" when he was called. This meant he was 13 or 14 years old. He and his brother, James, were called the "Boanerges" by Jesus. In our English today, this would be translated as "Loudmouth" or someone always "running off at the lip." The key incident is the time that they are refused hospitality. John says, "Wipe 'em out! Call down some fire and brimstone!"

According to the Apostolic Father, Irenaeus, who personally knew John in his old age, John never changed. He wrote the Apocalypse when he was about 71–73 years old. There is nothing tame in his attitude toward the persecuting Romans.

The progress being made in the medical field on epilepsy is marvelous. In the Gospels, the epileptic is explicitly depicted as a person possessed by the devil. In fact, the cure of the epileptic was the occasion for the open antagonism between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. This boy was brought to Jesus by his father. Jesus cured him in the middle of one of his seizures. The Jewish Leaders said his power came from the Prince of demons. Jesus just laughed at them. He asked how their medical men were able to cure the sick. The Leaders were caught in a bind and shut up. But they decided at that moment that Jesus had to die.