Bible Topics

I can see how John became a favorite of Christ and was not resented by the others. He would have been 13 or 14 at the time of his calling. He was called a "son of thunder," "boanerges" (teenager) by Christ. This meant he was a talented teenager who did not hesitate to speak up on any topic. He lived to be 100 and was well into his 80s when he wrote the Apocalypse. The book is in the style of Ezechiel and Jeremiah and an outright attack on the whole Roman system.

He was pursued far more than Paul by civil authorities. John is called the "Apostle of Love" but love for him is a living dynamic force that changes the world one person at a time. John is given credit as a martyr even though he died a natural death.

John (Gospel writer) was dead for a few years. His followers gathered together some of his ideas. It dawned on me what John was like in his first and last meeting with Christ before his death.

He was 13 or 14 years old at the time of the first meeting. He was a bright kid and into everything. He would be like an 8th or 9th grader today. A few years later, he was about 16 as he stood at the foot of the Cross. He was told to take care of Mary as his mother and she was told to work with the small group as the New Eve.

Then came Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene runs to tell the Apostles of the empty tomb. Peter and John run to the place. John stops at the entry but Peter barges right in. How many times John must have replayed these scenes through his long lifetime. His Gospel is the story of his reactions.

I like what I have written on the Eucharist. It makes sense. It is so clear in the Gospels that Christ was talking only about the Passover Meal and was giving it a new focus. This meal was to recall his death and resurrection from that time forward. The communities set up by Paul started to have the commemorative cup at each common meal. That was the sum total of the meaning.

I read through my writing on the Prophet Story from Elijah to John Baptist. The line starts and ends with men almost exactly alike in temperament and approach. Both of them were "moralists" or "reformers" and both of them saw clearly and predicted the outcome of the failures of the people. Both of them worked in the desert area east of the Jordan. Both were pursued by the authorities. Isaiah clobbered his pursuers. John Baptist was jailed and killed.

As I read the article on St. John's Gospel and his use of the term "The Jews," I have never had any doubt he meant it as a term of disrepute. There is also no doubt that he meant the "leaders" by this term. John, in no way, meant this term, the Jews, as an ethnic slur. He meant merely to remind these leaders that they had led the people up a blind alley and had never had sense enough to turn around and come out.

I think these ideas should be clearly stated in a prenote or preface to any translation of John's Gospel. I don't think the term should be dropped from the Gospel because of a modern meaning in our world. Either we accept literature as it was written or we destroy history.

I read two of the articles from the Interfaith paper. Both men have degrees in Jewish studies and both are Jewish by nationality. One article is all concerned with the bad name the Jewish people have had ever since the time of St. John and his Gospel. The writer certainly falls short in his estimate of time. The Jewish people have been despised and overrun since 722 B.C. with the Assyrian sac of Samaria and the northern Kingdom. Then in 587 B.C., the Babylonians walloped Jerusalem and Juda and used the term "Jews" as a hate word from that time forward. The prophets, one after the other, tried to warn and counsel the leaders. Their words fell on deaf ears and they explicitly persecuted and killed the prophets.

Persia offered the Jews a new start and a few of them used the opportunity but were soon at odds with everyone. The Romans, in 68–70 AD, put the final touches to the picture. Juda had never recovered from that defeat. The Romans took delight in persecuting them.

After 18.5 centuries, the modern "Israel" tried to lay claim to all the biblical Palestine including the East Banks of the Jordan and the Lake of Galilee. The Palestinian Arabs resented this intrusion and Israel is back to the picture of the Exodus and the crossing of the Jordan under Moses and Joshua. The Catholic Crusades also toss a fast curve to the picture. So I'd say, Yahweh meant what he said when he told them of reject under Daniel.

I went through all the passages in St. John's Gospel where he uses the word, "Jews." There are 33 incidents. The most condemnatory is Pilate's question, "Am I a Jew?" Also it is in John that the leaders shout, "We have no king but Caesar!" I can surely understand why the Jewish people object to this language if the name is used in the modern pejorative sense.

John's gospel is also the one that stresses the low esteem that the people in Jerusalem had for the people of Galilee and the people of Samaria. Of Nazareth, the leaders say "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" They saw Galilee in general and Nazareth in particular, as the center for criminals and crooks. That's why the title on the cross "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" is so detestable to the leaders. John says Pilate put that title in 3 languages on the cross so that all people could read it.

There is also the incident with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus asks her for a drink. Her answer is "You are a Jew and I a Samaritan, and you are talking to me?" She did not know he was from Nazareth because they were coming from Jerusalem.

I'll spend more time on that Johannine project about the Jews. I consulted Hatch-Redpath, Gesenius, Jerome Biblical commentary and my Greek texts, yesterday. I have all that data recorded. I have all 37 passages in John typed out.

The term "Jews" is used to mean the leaders of the Jews in their open hostility to Christ. It is used to mean all the members of the chosen people simply as their official title. It is used by Pilate to show his total detestation for the Jewish people which was partly the official Roman attitude and partly Pilate's special dislike for his job. He thought he deserved better.

Paul's letter to the Romans uses the title as an honorable name. In the OT, the name becomes the official title after 587 BC and the destruction of Jerusalem.

The world is in dire need of the kind of life Jesus Christ proposes. It won't come by mumbling prayers or following ritual practices.

Commentary on Acts is ready but I have to do a little more on Romans. That is by far the most complete of the Pauline letters and was at the heart of the whole problem in 1517 with Martin Luther and the authorities in Rome.

Looking at the whole question, 480 years later, the whole problem and all decisions at Trent in 1563 could have been sidestepped easily. First of all, Luther was a Scripture scholar far ahead of his times as can be seen by his writings still extant. Understanding Faith in its full Hebrew sense as he did, his statement was true. A person is to live by Faith alone.

Understanding Faith in the narrow catechism sense of the Roman authorities and theologians of the time, Luther was a heretic. Luther was crude and thumbed his nose at the Roman authorities. Rome was on its high horse and turned away in a huff. The Dominicans tried to speak up but were told to be quiet.

Then the Latin Vulgate with all its mistranslations was given authority over all original texts. The academic mess grew steadily worse until 1943 and Bea's tricking Pius XII into signing Divino Afflante Spiritu (must study Scripture in original languages).

As I was reading through the Gideon Bible (in motel room), I was amazed at the poor translation. It uses archaic words. Word order is difficult in many places. It is important that translations be accurate but also that they are in the vernacular of the time and place.

The original writings were all in the popular form of the times. The New Testament was despised by classical Greeks because it was written in "koine" or "common" idiom of the first centuries. Scholars had to write special grammars to explain this common usage.

We were taught both the Koine and classical Greek in DC and in Rome. In fact, Marty Higgins, Greek prof at C.U., would not pass a student who did not learn the classical usage. He also insisted we should not reference the Koine as inferior. It was "popular" as in the language of newspapers and magazines.

Yesterday I worked on the languages of the Bible. I did not bother to give a complete development to the notion before. Now I think it is a topic that should be treated. We have the Hebrew of the OT as it now stands. There is question as to whether it was ever spoken in this formal way. Then we arrive at Aramaic in some of the last books of the OT and the original Matthew was written in Aramaic.

Greek was the common language of the early Christians outside of Palestine. So all the writings of the NT are in Greek.

This is "koine" or "common" Greek in contrast to the classical of Homer. I read the article on Greece in our Encyclopedia and found it well done with three or four cross references I still have to look up. The early Fathers of the church wrote in Koine Greek. The Migne collection was about 125 volumes of the Latin Fathers. We had the entire set in Oc-oc and that was one block of books that was burned when the CSsR sold out.

Yesterday, I worked for a while on the "Languages of the Bible." Then I ran through my series on "Who Is God?" in the Bible. I had read another article on the popularity of this question. It is not so much "Is there a God?" but "Who" or "What is God?"

There have been as many different answers to this question as there were different cultures. Almost all of them had multiple deities and a hierarchy within the ranks. These gods had to be flattered, appeased, and called on in various ways and rituals and signs.

The one basic notion of God in the Bible is "Father." This idea becomes stronger and stronger until Jesus propounds his ideas by his life and words.

The one point Jesus stresses is that there was to be no ritual other than a community meal from time to time. His followers were to change the world by the example of their sharing with each other in daily life. Gradually, this community meal, a pot-luck supper, became a daily occurrence. According to Irenaeus, this frequency was to make sure that all the followers, especially the poor people, were properly fed. Today, the breakfast or supper is considered an extra or sideline.

I taught that the Bible is a source of basic human principles. I made major changes in my thinking along the way.

I really like what I have now because the whole picture is within the grasp of the human mind. There are no mysteries that must be taken on faith in the infallible authority of some Pope or Council. The very notion of Original Sin and its consequences is a farce. The human race still falls back regularly into acts of meanness and brutality. This simply shows the work still to be done.

The Holy Spirit as the sense of sharing and community gives so much power to the whole picture. The basic fact that this Spirit could not develop as long as Christ was present was so evident. They figured Christ would do the talking and be there as a buffer against all problems. When he was gone they had to develop a real community and work together or the plan was destroyed. So Luke describes this new spirit as the counteraction to the selfishness of the Tower of Babel. From Babel onward, people could not work together. From Pentecost onwards, they could form a true Koinonia (sharing) and solve the world's problems.

The work I did from my note in the JB yesterday on "Holy Spirit" was beyond my wildest dreams. The note refers to all the passages in which the "Spirit" of Yahweh is used. It is always a reference to that initial "breath" or "spirit" which God put in people to give them life. That breath was tainted by the selfishness and rebellion of mankind. Christ gave us the pattern of sincere "love" or "unselfishness," gave back that old and "tainted" breath, and left us with the "holy Breath." This breath is the spirit of sharing and serving each other which is the only source of true and lasting peace.

I have a huge job to do on the Holy Spirit as I mentioned. It is the basic truth of the whole Christian picture. When that spirit is truly established the human race will become what it is supposed to be. It will use the earth and all its properties according to plan. Until then, we will continue to see wars and fighting and meanness.

I'll work on the "Spirit" today. The topic is far more inclusive and interesting than I imagined. The "breath" or "Spirit" always has identically the same meaning as in Genesis 2. Yahweh forms the piece of clay and breathes into it the "breath of life." This points out the close relationship between God and man and the interdependence of all people on each other.

The "holy breath" is the removal of the "tainted breath" by Christ who bestowed the "new Breath" after the Resurrection. The description of the gift of the Holy Breath is "tongues of fire." Fire is the symbol of mission as in Moses and Elijah. The form of a "tongue" is to indicate how this mission is to be carried out by teaching, not force, fighting or wars. The Gift of Tongues was the power to speak in this new spirit.

I have been wrestling with the question "Who is God?" for three days. I have the series of 8 articles on one disk about the topic. I started to re-read them and suddenly I felt that I was just skimming the top. So I started back through my Biblical evidence. The earliest dated writing of the OT comes from the time of Elijah or later — that's 9th century B.C. At that time, they used the generic term "Elohim" which is "a deity." Then they started in Isaiah to talk about "Yahweh" — he or it who causes to be.

Then came all the prophets and teachers of the OT. Their one goal was to establish and maintain a society of their people in which everyone got along and worked together. They were to be the "model family" of the human race. For this they needed a "common father." So the Father was born. Then all the qualities of this Father were developed for the guidance and imitation of the people.