The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
2 Corinthians 13:13 (14 in some Bibles)
Evidence for the three Persons of the Trinity? Unfortunately, no. Paul was not saying that Yahweh is three persons in one being. He was closing off his letter with a simple form of Hebrew poetry in which parallelism is used to give more detail to a single referent. This type of poetry fills the Old Testament and is scattered throughout the New. In 2 Corinthians, we have three names/titles (Lord Jesus Christ, God, Holy Ghost) referring to a single referent (God) and three circumstances (grace, love, communion) related to that single referent.
We could use a modern example:
The President rules our county
and Bush leads our people.
and the arm of our nation’s head will fight for us.
Neither president
, bush
, nor nation’s head
are meant to be understood as three different persons. They are different words for the same person placed in a poetic parallelism to each other such that what is said in each instance corresponds to and adds detail to what was said before.
Says our protector
the Lord who leads armies is his name
the sovereign king of Israel:
Isaiah 47:4
Sovereign king, Lord, and protector do not refer to three different persons. They have the same referent: Yahweh. They are part of a poetic parallelism in which our,
armies,
and Israel
are related to the exact same person—not to a separation or division of persons.
2nd Corinthians 13:13 (or 14) tells us not that Yahweh is three persons, but Yeshua, Yahweh, and Spirit are different ways of referring to the same person—God. The distinction is slight, but it’s significant. The poetry is telling us that when we speak of the person Yeshua, we are speaking of the person Yahweh. When we speak of the person Spirit, we are speaking of the person Yahweh. A Trinity reading of this verse would destroy the parallelism because the person Spirit is not the person Yeshua and the person Yahweh is not the person Yeshua, etc.
I think this misunderstanding is key to the Trinity. These three names/titles appear in many places in the New Testament together, but they are separated in such a way that something meant to give deeper and more unified meaning to a single referent becomes a partitioning and limiting of meaning between multiple referents.
…of Protestantism/Catholicism
…the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe [obligatorily] what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
Josephus, Antiquities 13.10.6
- Roman Catholicism = Apostolic Succession (Tradition of the Fathers) = Pharisees
- Protestantism = Sola Scriptura (Prominence of Word only) = Sadducees
Second Maccabees is a book not about the Maccabees but about the God of Israel defending his temple.
Judgment and restoration begin in the House of YHWH. In 1st and 2nd Maccabees, the purity and holiness of the People of God (and by extension, the mission of this People to purify and make holy the unclean and unholy nations) was being compromised. The temple was being overthrown and defiled. Yahweh is presented as working through his Remnant (the Maccabeen revolters) and its Head (Judas Maccabeus) to bring the temple back to life and restore his People to a right relationship with Him. This temple is, of course, an actual temple, and the restoration would take place in it through sacrifice that was the same as ancient days: animal. So it was that a new ceremony and celebration focused on the temple itself (Hannukah) would become definitive of Israel.
The gospels are also an attempt to show the God of Israel defending his temple. In that case, however, the temple is something other than a building of rock. This time, it is living stone, a tabernacle of flesh. Just as the former temple underwent a baptism of fire and was vindicated in rebirth, so Yeshua is stricken and destroyed, but brought back to life (resurrected) in vindication of the new dwelling-place of YHWH. The gospels also, in like manner, proclaim Israel’s God working through a Head (Yeshua of Nazareth) and a Remnant (Yeshua’s disciples), to restore and purify His People (and by extension, the nations). The sacrifice, this time, is not animal, it is human. It is a willingness of the People to give up their own life (as exemplified by Yeshua) to bring all things into right relationship with YHWH. Instead of being accomplished in Zerubabel’s temple as Maccabees would have it, this is now done in Yeshua. Like before, there is a new ceremony and celebration focused on the temple (Communion) that would become definitive of Israel.
The literatures present two ways meant to lead to the same result. Both present these as the way, the truth, and the life. And, perhaps, both were equally ordained. Instead of being mutually exclusive, these ways can be mutually beneficent in history. There cannot, of course, be two temples, which is why the one was raised and the other thrown down. But in the proper seasons, the People of God were being regathered and reorganized as YHWH moved through Her. In such ways, Maccabees and the Gospels are a witness.
This year is the 60th Anniversary of the DSS. In celebration, Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review have made available online, free of charge, several articles from their publications. Go here to read them.
- The Enigma of Qumran
- An Interview With John Strugnell
- A Gospel Among the Scrolls?
- What Jesus Learned From The Essenes
- Who Is The Teacher of Rightousness?
- Jesus and the Teacher of Rightousness, Similarities and Differences
The official name for the Unicode dead sea scroll font is DSShebrew. Major glyph design is finished for all consonants and end forms (including Paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton). It is now ready for reassessment, adjustment, fine tuning, and package preparation. Pictured here is not only the Hebrew alphabet, but a small sample from a dead sea scroll with its script reproduced below using the DSShebrew font.
As I prepare for my Spring getaway to Ireland, I decided to look up the local Irish Christian perspective. It was just my luck to discover that the first issue of Irish Theological Quarterly, a journal released through Sage Publications, is currently available for reading or download at no cost. Check it out.
Bible Review and Biblical Archaeology Review have made available free of charge several articles by professionals in the field on the subject of Yeshua’s and 1st Century Jewish burial. To download the PDF ebook, go here.
Contents are as follows:
- Introduction
- What Did Jesus’ Tomb Look Like? – Jodi Magness
- Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus’ Tomb? – Amos Kloner
- Does the Holy Sepulchre Mark the Burial of Jesus? – Dan Bahat
- The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here? – Gabriel Barkay
- The Garden Tomb and the Misfortunes of an Inscription – Jerome Murphy-O’Connor
- Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple – Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner
- All in the Family – Richard J. Bauckham
- Notes
*Gabriel Barkay is known for his discovery of the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls – the earliest witness of Hebrew scripture in existence, outdating even the Dead Sea Scrolls by two or three hundred years.
The name Mariamne for Mary Magdalen does not originate in gnostic texts 300 years or more after the time, but from an opponent of Gnosticism, Hippolytus, in his Refutation of All Heresies (230-ish AD). There, he uses two forms of the name for Mary: Mariamme and Mariamne. This is the first use of Mariamne for Mary Magdalen that we have on record…more than a century earlier than the gnostic Acts of Phillip and from the pen of a church father.
It is easy to explain the presence of a Matthew…because this tomb, according to the archaeological data, was used for between 3 and 4 generations, was home to upwards of about 35 individuals, and was open between the close of the first century BC and 70 AD (pot sherds being found in the tomb could date back as far as 30-ish BC). The ossuraries are not the only places where relatives would be buried…remains would also be kept on the shelves in the different rooms of the tomb…sometimes before being transfered to an ossurary. Bone residue/dust was found on tomb shelves (so there were at least more than 10 people). Therefore, it is possible that Matthew could be a brother, an uncle, or any of several other number of relatives of Maria
.
For those reasons above, it is also quite easy to explain why the other brothers of Yeshua of Nazareth (if this is his family’s tomb) are not mentioned: 1. because we have four bone boxes that are not inscribed, 2. because the sealing of the tomb by about 70 AD would keep any living relatives from being admitted, and 3. because not all family members are usually mentioned on ossuaries in family tombs (this tomb has more names than is usual).
There is a problem with identifying Jesus
in the Jesus son of Joseph
inscription. The first name is somewhat illegible. The problem can be cleared up archaeologically by the presence of the same name on another ossuary in the tomb, but we begin to see the conclusion softening and becoming questionable…especially since Jesus
was such a common name.
Since we have no other data linking a son named Judah to Yeshua of Nazareth, let’s set that aside from the discussion at present… First it should be shown why the family in the tomb is likely to be Yeshua of Nazareth’s, then it will make sense to argue that Judah
is his son.
Moving on, we come to Mariamne. Looking at the inscription, we find that the name is not Mariamne, but Mariamenou. This is the genitive of Mariamenon
. Mariamenou would mean belonging to
or of Mariamenon
. But since Mariamenon does not match up with any known Mary name, it is likely a derivative of Meriamene.
The claim of the film and book appears to be that Mariamne is a shortened form of Mariamene (stupid Es, always getting lost…). If we can eliminate Mary Magdalen as a possibility for Mariamene, then we are left with three names from record that identify us with the family of Yeshua of Nazareth: Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. If we can get to that point, the possibility of these three names occurring—not just in a family of two generations but perhaps of three or four—becomes nothing exceptional and takes away any power of statistics that hitherto have been the single greatest reason for linking Yeshua of Nazareth and his family to this tomb and its contents.
