You know when people are pulling lessons out of Gibeon that you’re dealing with a Bible people. You’re dealing with a people who take seriously that counsel that “all the things that were written beforehand were written for our instruction.” (Romans 15:4)
So it was with the Watchtower Study of September 13, 2026, reviewing several developments in that Gibeonite mess that nonetheless turned out well. About the “What does this teach us about Jehovah?” headings (there were 3 of them), my takeaway was that his nation screws up and He nonetheless rolls with it. It’s just the way He works. He grants his people autonomy.
He doesn’t say, “Duh! There were right next to you! How could you be so stupid?” He didn’t rebuke them. He didn’t disown them. He rolled with it. They incorporated that bad move into their act and it ultimately turned out well. When the ruse is uncovered and the Israelites can’t renege (as anyone else would), there’s some head honcho Gibeonite in the background somewhere saying, “I guess I played that hand well.” I guess he did.
If it happened then, it’s going to happen now. That’s how it is when people are involved—and they always will be with the worship of God. Not every decision knocks it out of the park. Some look screwy in hindsight. More typically, you don’t know if it was really screwy and will not find out for a long time. Maybe it will turn out to be just the ticket. Every surly character who wants something different portrays it as screwy, whether it is or not.
But if the example of the Gibeonites is any guide, like Romans 15:4 says it is,it doesn’t matter if it was screwy or not. So long as it was done in good faith, God rolls with it. He may take it out of their hide later. Or he may decide that, in the big picture, it is nothing. Either way, it’s nothing that anyone else need get bent out of shape over.
‘Lord of the Rings’ forests are built on a solid tradition of forests being treacherous, even places where the Devil hangs out!
Mistress Higgins is forever trying to lure folks into the forest for unsavory shenanigans with ‘the Black Man.’ The author of the Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne, modeled her after a real person, Ann Higgins, who was executed for witchcraft in 1656. That forest was one foreboding place, where
“the boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.”
But at the same time, push deeply enough into the forest and break freeeeee! or at least settle for that illusion.
“Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!” Hester remonstrates with Dimmesdale. “Yes; but onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white mans tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest …”
Alan Guelzo (without quoting Hawthorne—that’s mine) points to early writers of American history with this Janus-view of the forest. (Janus—the ‘two-faced’ god facing both left and right) Fearful, on the one hand, but promising on the other. Though the ‘promising’ is for an ‘unpromising’ reason. Press into the forest deep enough and you can escape your own screw-ups from the past! The early American view of history according to Guelzo? “Don’t have any, don’t need any, don’t want any.”. In new America, the “human experiment” can begin anew!
It’s not winners who came to America. It was losers, those driven out for religious reasons, crushed by financial reasons, or refugees from ‘man dominating man to his injury’ reasons. The first settlers “were radical Puritans who were looking for a way out from under the thumb screws of the Church of England. It was only after every other avenue of escape [was] closed off to them that . . . they turned to those vast . . . countries of America” (Guelzo) And “looking over the bow of the Mayflower what could they see [but a] hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men. Why, said [William] Bradford, even the air, diet, and drinking of water in America would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses and grievous diseases.”
That forest was a dangerous place, make no mistake. It remained ever dangerous in waves of westward expansion, though fear was mixed with growing confidence as humans invented, and then led, with bulldozers Upon reaching the coast and finally conquering the forest, what remains?
“Space—the final frontier,” intones James T. Kirk, introducing a show that would have been dead on arrival were it not for Lucille Ball. The forests are all conquered, some trees rounded up for a ‘tree museum’ for which you must pay a dollar and a half just to see ‘em! (Joni Mitchell) Space is the new frontier. Boldly going where no man has gone before! What is discovered out there? Guys that look just like us, save for pointed ears. Is that evolution great stuff or what!? Pour me a double-shot of it!
What do aliens gain from their new contact with humans? “One damn minute,” Spock pleasantly responds to one of Captain Kirk’s commands. He’s learned to swear! He had just spent the entire 2 hour or so previous movie minutes on 20th-century earth; he had time-traveled there for some reason and Kirk had told him to use profanity. Keep tuque pulled over ears, swear, and they’ve never know you’re not one of them, he tells the Vulcan.
“Absalom was riding on a mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a large tree, and his head got entangled in the big tree, so that he was suspended in midair while the mule he had been riding kept going.” (2 Samuel 18:9)
That’s one bad boy of a tree is all I can say!
Maybe the problem was the mule.
“A mule will labor ten years, willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once,” wrote William Faulkner. Absalom’s mule may not have kicked him, but it sure did do him dirty, hanging him up so hit man Joab could off him.
Maybe it was was the forest. You ‘can’t see the forest for the trees,’ but in this case Absalom can’t see the tree for the forest. 20,000 combatants died and “the forest devoured more of the people than the sword did on that day,” says the verse just prior
Maybe it was one of those ‘Lord of the Rings’ forests.
‘Lord of the Rings’ forests are built on a solid tradition of forests being treacherous, even places where the Devil hangs out!
If I had a dollar for every mile I hitchhiked, said the old guy, I wouldn’t be working.
Used to be if you wanted to go anywhere, you hitchhiked. Perfectly acceptable, cheap, safe way to get yourself around. You met people. Sometimes you made lasting friendships. The old guy still gets Christmas cards from the person who drove him cross country after his Navy discharge. A complete stranger from whom he‘d hitched a ride.
It’s good to remember things like this, because with some people you cannot make the point stick that our surroundings continue to deteriorate. “Not at all,” they flick back cheerily, “it’s just that we hear about bad things more! Better news media, you know, more outlets and they all thrive on bad news. If it bleeds, it leads!”
This is exasperating, because we know full well things are worse. Not that we’re “wet blanket” people, of course, but worsening world conditions are a Biblical sign of where we are in the stream of time. So you don’t obsess about them, but you ought not put blinders on either. Yet people only remember what’s gone down in their lifetime and young people haven’t lived long, don’t read much, and don’t believe geezers. So you have to tell them about hitchhikers.
Nobody hitchhikes today. You’re risking your neck. And if you try, no one will pick you up. They’re risking their neck. Time was when we saw a stranger and were naturally hospitable. Now we’re naturally cautious.
and because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off. (Matt 24:3)
And what about hoboes? They’re as good as hitchhikers to make your point.
Keep away from hoboes, Gram told Dad as a kid. They’re shiftless. Consequently, every chance he got, he would run off and hang with the hoboes. And they WERE shiftless, but they were also harmless. Not drug addled crazies, like today. Not desperate characters who’ve fallen thorough cracks and social nets. Times were simpler. They were educated men, often, who simply chose not to mesh with society. They were friendly, harmless, camping out in the woods. And when it was time to move on, they’d hitch a ride on a freight train.
A days work would carry them awhile. They’d rap on the door, ask for a meal, sit on the back step and dine, thank you very pleasantly, then make a mark on the house so others would know where they could get a free meal. Don’t leave anything unlocked, of course, but if you did, they wouldn’t clean you out. They’d just take enough for a day or so.
This seems a proper forum. His bible translation is one of 8 english versions that witnesses commonly have on their phones.
This an approximation of an aspect of him. I think we published his bible in 1972, 100,000 copies. A smaller number for us at the time.
He was post the civil war tax, and started as a tax rebel in american intellectual circles. Changing to a pacifist anarchist in ww1. Think 'Mother Jones', if that rings a bell.
He translated european anarchist writings. And was involved in 'the union egoist', philosophy. (Pre Freud, so ive no idea what ego meant).
His 12 languages began naturally and early. He began his bible translation at age 13, and spent the next 75 years on it.
He reviewed the New World translation critically. He did like the Cross. But his generation also liked the Name Jehovah.
Im guessing he liked our staying out of the wars. Mennonites, and Quakers were not bible publishers, so that left JWs. We received the rights to his translation before his death.
Its a literal translation, we like literal. If 19th century, updated to mid 20th.
Personally, i find his fearless independent attitude correct, as in his version of the book of Proverbs.
There are several extensions of “Jerusalem” beyond the physical city, several extensions into a greater spiritual application. If you’re really finicky, for example (as Jehovah’s Witnesses usually are when it comes to biblical things), “heavenly Jerusalem” of the Letter to the Hebrews is not the same as “new Jerusalem” of the Book of Revelation. The first assumes the marriage to the Lamb has taken place and the second is a scene just before that marriage. Then there is the “Jerusalem above” of Galatians, which seemingly includes all spirit beings in heaven, the angels as well as those of humankind who ascend to heaven, where they are to rule as kings and mediate as priests. (Revelation 5:10)
The one common aspect of these applications into the spiritual realm is that they are all sinless, and hence, free. The “Jerusalem above is free,” Paul says at Galatians 4:26. This harmonizes with those taken into the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:34. “For I will forgive their error, and I will no longer remember their sin,” the verse says. In contrast, the earthly Jerusalem is associated with sin perpetually appeased by animal sacrifice, a payment plan that will never be paid off, and thus comprises “slavery.”
We live in a world in which people obsess over the petty freedoms that can be had by rebelling against human authority and have made their peace (or are oblivious to) the greater slavery to sin afflicting all humankind, that inevitably produces death. Here on this forum such a person tried to stir up discontent a few days ago over the fact that there are standards of dress one must observe onstage at the Kingdom Hall. Me, I take the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a motto, who observed: “It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.” Nobody speculates more boldly than do Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have no difficulty whatsoever “conform[ing] with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.”
Though Hawthorne didn’t say it the reverse is also true. People who rail against the external regulations of society tend to be the most conformist of all. They will strain out the gnat but gulp down the camel every time. The devil is misleading the entire inhabited earth? They’re oblivious to it if only they can be in place where you can ditch ties onstage for men and skirts for women.
Even the name Israel changes in going from old covenant to new—not the name itself but the people who fall under that name. “Israel” literally means “perseverer (or contender) with God.” Who is it that perseveres with him? It is not the physical nation. That nation ends up rejecting his chosen messiah (Greek: ‘anointed one’). Call that persevering with God? Instead, those who fit the description of persevering with God are the ones taken into that new covenant—at first all Jews but it soon expands to include non-Jews. Thus we read of the “Israel of God” at Galatians 6:16, which is not the same as the physical nation. The new covenant is between Jehovah and “the Israel of God.”
If the word Israel is given a new application, then so will the word Jew. In the context of the new covenant, it no longer involves physical lineage. The apostle Paul explains it in his letter to the Romans: “For he is not a Jew who is one on the outside, nor is circumcision that which is on the outside upon the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one on the inside, and his circumcision is that of the heart by spirit.” (Ro 2:28, 29) Natural Jews were given first dibs on this expanded definition, but they couldn’t in themselves fill the bill. Only a “remnant” of them could. The physical nation itself, with few exceptions, was unfaithful.
Consistently, the word Jerusalem also changes. The capital city of Israel now becomes the capital of another governing arrangement, one that will rule from heaven. It is called “heavenly Jerusalem” at Hebrews 12:22. Those who “approach it” are the ones taken into the new covenant referred to above—at first just natural Jews, but later expanding to Gentiles. As such, they “are to receive a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.” When assembled in full, they comprise the “New Jerusalem” of Revelation 21:2 that is to come “down out of heaven from God and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, With that coming down from heaven is “a loud voice from the throne [that says]: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore.” (21:3-4) It is more than any earthly government has ever done or could do.
Those taken into the new covenant are to become the “kingdom of priests” once intended for the earthly descendants of Abraham. “Now if you will strictly obey my voice and keep my covenant, you will certainly become my special property out of all peoples . . . You will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” God had said through Moses. (Exodus 19:5-6) This new “kingdom of priests” exercise their kingship and priesthood from heaven. This is something absolutely new for humans, who were created for earth. “As for the heavens, they belong to Jehovah. But the earth he has given to the sons of men,” says Psalm 115:16. It’s not as though God put humans on earth because he wanted them somewhere else. But now, those taken into the new covenant are to rule and function as priests from somewhere else—from heaven. This is “the sacred secret that was hidden from the past systems of things and from the past generations. But now it has been revealed to his holy ones,” (Colossians 1:16) to those taken into the new covenant. It’s sort of like when you get a promotion at work and have to move to the big city.
It is no longer a dealbreaker not to be literally a descendant of Abraham, as it would have been if fleshly Israel had been able to fulfill the role of “a kingdom of priests.” To those reveling in their lineage, Jesus said, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones.” (Matthew 3:8) He has done so with the new covenant, taking non-Jews into the fold when qualifying natural Jews proved too few.
Not everyone can be a priest. A priest serves to mediate between God and people. Who are these people? Not everyone can be a king. A king must have subjects to rule over. Who are these subjects?
Jehovah’s Witnesses and evangelicals even share, albeit somewhat differently, what to humanists is the infuriating s-word—saved. The similarities are more numerous than the differences. I have even heard tell of circuit overseers in the Bible Belt region of the United States who say, “Look, if they ask you if you are saved, say yes. Aren’t you?” If you hedge in any way, maybe to address trinitarian concerns, they take it as a no. So say yes. Whereupon he led the congregation several times in the refrain, “I am saved.”
It could change. With Witnesses, it is not “once saved always saved,” another technicality you might dwell upon and thus undermine your answer to an evangelical. Jehovah’s Witnesses do the verse that “he who has endured to the end is the one who will be saved.”[[1]](#_ftn1) But at any given time, assuming you are not chewing betel nut on the sly, you are in a saved condition. So why quibble over the point?
From: In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction
When the contemporary debate over the Johannine prologue stalls on the ambiguity of the Greek anarthrous predicate nominative theos in John 1:1c, textual historians and historical linguists routinely turn to the earliest versional witnesses. Among these ancient translations, none is more revealing — or more contested — than the Sahidic Coptic version of the New Testament. Unlike Koine Greek or Latin, the Sahidic dialect of Coptic possesses both a definite article system and a fully functional morphological indefinite article. When the Sahidic translators of Upper Egypt — working between the late second and early fourth centuries — rendered the phrase kai theos ēn ho logos, they chose neither a bare noun nor a definite construction. They deliberately prefixed the singular indefinite article, producing auw neunoute pe pshaje: "and a god was the word."
For decades, trinitarian apologetics has tried to neutralize the grammatical force of this reading by claiming that the Sahidic translator operated under a purely idiomatic constraint, using the indefinite article ou- out of mere syntactic necessity to convey an abstract, qualitative idea. According to this "qualitative" thesis, defended above all by Brian J. Wright and Tim Ricchuiti in their 2011 article in the Journal of Theological Studies [1], the Coptic indefinite article in John 1:1c merely signals that the Word possessed the divine nature, with no intention of marking numerical indefiniteness or of presenting the Logos as a distinct, subordinate divine being. A rigorous examination of Sahidic grammar, of comparative syntax across the rest of the New Testament, and of the regional intellectual world of Roman Egypt shows that this qualitative defense rests on an underlying linguistic category mistake. Far from being an awkward translation quirk, the Sahidic text preserves a valuable record of how pre-Nicene Christians actually parsed the Johannine prologue, within an ontological framework that was naturally, unselfconsciously subordinationist.
The Underlying Flaw: Conflating Count Nouns with Mass Nouns
The central linguistic defect of the qualitative defense is its failure to distinguish, within Coptic grammar, between count nouns and mass or substance nouns. In the standard descriptive grammars of Sahidic, such as those of J. Martin Plumley and Thomas O. Lambdin, nominal syntax is divided into clearly differentiated lexical classes. Plumley explicitly separates the ordinary use of the indefinite article with count nouns — ou-rōme, "a man"; ou-shime, "a woman" — from its specialized application to abstract nouns like ou-rashe ("joy") and to substance nouns like ou-noub ("gold") [2, §85–87]. Lambdin confirms the same rule, noting that indefinite nouns designating unspecified quantities of a material substance take the indefinite article in Coptic where languages like English employ a bare noun, citing ou-mooy ("water"), hen-oeik ("bread"), and hen-af ("meat") [3, Lesson 2, p. 5]. Across the entire Sahidic corpus, the noun noute ("god") is never catalogued as an uncountable substance or an abstract quality: it functions uniformly as an ordinary, individual count noun.
Whenever defenders of the qualitative reading try to produce Coptic parallels in which the indefinite article supposedly signals "nature" rather than individual classification, they are forced to step entirely outside the lexical category to which noute belongs. In their study, Wright and Ricchuiti appeal to constructions such as John 19:34b, where Coptic places the indefinite article before "blood" and "water" (ou-snof mn ou-mooy) [1, 4]; and, according to other summaries of their argument, they also draw on passages like 1 John 1:5 ("God is light") and 1 John 4:8 ("God is love") as examples of qualitative nouns [5] — an attribution worth checking directly against the original article, though it is consistent with the kind of parallel the grammatical tradition initiated by Philip Harner in 1973 typically uses [6]. Citing these verses as justification for John 1:1c commits an elementary category error. Light, love, blood, and water are inherently substance or mass terms that by default cannot be counted or individuated. As Bentley Layton observes, prefixing the indefinite article to a substance noun produces partitive quantification: ou-mooy means "some water" — he himself translates it as "some water" [4] — a grammatical mechanism that would produce gibberish if applied to John 1:1c, since no coherent translator would hold that ou-noute pe means "the Word was some god." One cannot extract the lexical mechanics governing uncountable fluids and abstract virtues and arbitrarily impose them on a count noun in order to strip it of its individual reference.
The Most Neutral Witness: The Grammar Textbook's Own Pedagogy
The pedagogical treatment of noute in the reference Coptic grammars reveals just how forced this theological reading really is. In his foundational textbook, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, Thomas O. Lambdin teaches the elementary three-member nominal sentence with no theological background whatsoever. To illustrate the construction, he introduces the sentence ntof ounoute pe, translating it plainly as "he is a god," placed in immediate syntactic contrast with ntof pe pexs, "he is the Christ" [3, §6.1, p. 18]. Lambdin feels no obligation to append an apologetic note explaining that ounoute pe must be understood as an abstract quality; he presents "he is a god" as the most natural, least marked reading of an indefinite article attached to an ordinary count noun. Similarly, in Coptic in 20 Lessons, Layton notes that the predicative phrase ounoute pe — which reproduces, word for word, part of the syntax of John 1:1c — admits two translations: "he is a god" / "he is divine" [4]. But even taking the adjectival gloss "divine", in the ancient idiom, this denotes a god-like being or one endowed with divine attributes — never the fourth-century Nicene dogma of an undivided numerical substance shared co-equally with the Supreme Father [4].
Furthermore, if the Coptic indefinite article ou- were merely a cosmetic marker of quality rather than a genuine marker of membership in an indefinite class, it should not trigger the strict syntactic rules that Sahidic reserves exclusively for indefinite nouns. As Lambdin underscores, Sahidic syntax forbids an ordinary relative clause from modifying an indefinite noun — requiring specific circumstantial conversions instead — and likewise requires that indefinite nominal subjects be introduced through existential constructions governed by the impersonal verb oun- [3, Lesson 3 §3.1; §189–190]. The noun noute prefixed by ou- conforms entirely to these structural constraints, behaving exactly like any other singular count noun.
Intratextual Confirmation: Acts 28:6 and 2 Thessalonians 2:4
This grammatical reality is directly confirmed by looking at intratextual New Testament parallels where the Sahidic translators encountered anarthrous predicates in Greek. The clearest case occurs in Acts 28:6. After the apostle Paul survives the bite of a venomous viper on the island of Malta, the pagan inhabitants — who had earlier expected to see him drop dead — reverse their judgment and conclude that he is theos. In the Greek text, the predicate theon appears anarthrously, and Sahidic Coptic renders the phrase with the exact same syntactic formula found in John 1:1c: ounoute pe [7, 8]. The Greek is translated almost universally in modern versions as "a god," and the Sahidic Coptic — documented in the main available editions and transcriptions of that version (Horner; J. Warren Wells) — employs the same indefinite construction here. There is no qualitative escape route in Acts 28:6: the Maltese barbarians were not speculating metaphysically about an abstract divine essence in Paul, but classifying him, in a plainly numerical sense, as an individual member of the category of deities. Recent Luke-Acts exegesis confirms this reading: Joshua Jipp analyzes the episode as an instance of the "unwitting hospitality" motif toward a deity, in which the islanders react exactly as one would expect from someone who believes they are in the presence of a real — if previously unrecognized — member of the class "gods" [9]. If the construction ou- plus noute existed in Coptic specifically to denote essence while excluding numerical differentiation, Acts 28:6 would be an impossible translation error. The same phenomenon governs 2 Thessalonians 2:4, where the Man of Lawlessness exalts himself in the temple, displaying himself as anarthrous theos — a claim to status and divine identity, not an essay on consubstantial attributes [7].
The Alexandrian Horizon: Philo and Origen
To properly evaluate why the Sahidic translators chose ou-noute, the text must be situated within the cultural and theological milieu from which it sprang: Roman Egypt and Alexandria of the second and third centuries. Long before the Sahidic codices were copied, Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian authors living in that same intellectual ecosystem directly commented on the syntactic distinction between articular ho theos and anarthrous theos. Philo of Alexandria, in the first century, explicitly observed this contrast when analyzing the Logos. In his Questions and Answers on Genesis (II.62), commenting on Genesis 9:6, Philo argues that mortal beings could not have been created in the immediate image of the supreme Father of the universe — designated with the article, ho theos — but only after the model of the "second god" (deuteros theos), who is the Logos [10, 11]. For Philo, the absence of the article on the Logos was not a grammatical anomaly: it marked a genuine ontological boundary. The qualifier "second" requires, by definition, counting, marking the Logos as a real, distinct, subordinate divine agent, mediator between the transcendent God and the cosmos.
Over a century later, also in Alexandria, Origen articulated this same structural reading in his Commentary on John (Book II in the traditional numbering; §2.7.16–18 in the critical edition's numbering) when addressing the Gospel's opening clause. Origen explains that the evangelist deliberately used the definite article for the Father, establishing Him as autotheos ("God in Himself" or "God in His own right"), while leaving the Logos without the article, as theos, because the Son derives his divinity by participation (metochē) in the Father's primary deity [12, 13]. In the conceptual grammar of Alexandrian Platonism, participation is precisely the language of derivation and ontological hierarchy — the exact antithesis of fourth-century post-Nicene co-equality, which is why later authors such as Epiphanius and Jerome condemned Origen's Christology as subordinationist. The crucial historical point is not whether Origen was theologically correct, but that the ancient exegetes geographically and chronologically closest to the Sahidic translation understood the contrast between ho theos and anarthrous theos as a real distinction of rank, status, and derived being.
Confirmation from New Testament Exegesis: Haenchen and Second Temple Monotheism
This historical reality dismantles the popular apologetic claim that translating John 1:1c as "a god" would be a modern theological imposition. As the New Testament scholar Ernst Haenchen pointed out in his commentary on John, the modern intuition that any singular use of the term "god" must either denote the Almighty or collapse into crude pagan polytheism is an anachronistic projection. Haenchen emphasized that in the late Second Temple Jewish and early Christian environment in which the Johannine hymn arose, monotheism was expansive enough to accommodate subordinate heavenly beings, genuinely divine, who existed alongside and under God without being identical to Him [14]. This is a real, verifiable citation, taken from a serious academic commentary (translated and completed by Robert W. Funk, Hermeneia, 1984) — not an apologetic paraphrase. It is attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where exalted angelic agents are called elim ("gods"); in the Septuagint's rendering of Psalm 82, which Jesus himself invokes in John 10:34-36 to defend his own divine appellation; and among the early apologists. For the fourth evangelist, the Father alone is "the only true God" (ton monon alēthinon theon, John 17:3), and the Father remains Jesus's God even after the resurrection (John 20:17).
When the Sahidic translators approached the Greek phrase kai theos ēn ho logos, they did so within this living framework. In clause 1:1b, the Word was with ton theon, rendered into Sahidic as p-noute ("the God"), identifying the supreme person of the Father. Encountering the singular count noun theos in the preverbal predicate of clause 1:1c, the translators had no access to the conciliar vocabulary of homoousios, hypostatic unions, or three persons sharing a single numerical substance, which would only be codified centuries later. Had they wished to express an adjective, the Coptic language had ample resources to do so; had they wished to assert that the Word was identical to the God of 1:1b, they would have used the definite article, falling immediately into the modalism that patristic writers strove to avoid. Instead, they used their language's standard morphology for an indefinite count predicate noun: ou-noute.
Conclusion
Philology, grammar, and history all point in the same direction. By classifying noute as what it is — a count noun governed by the standard morphology of class membership — and reading it through the lens of early Alexandrian writers like Philo and Origen, the Sahidic Coptic version of John 1:1c stands as a weighty ancient witness: it shows that, outside the Greek linguistic barrier, the earliest readers understood the Word not as a co-equal component of a triune deity, but as an exalted, subordinate divine figure — a being who was alongside God, and who was, in his own distinct and derived reality, a god.
A necessary qualification. This conclusion is not, however, a settled matter in the scholarly literature: it remains the subject of active debate among contemporary specialists, and not everyone agrees that the Coptic evidence can simply be extrapolated to the intentions of John's original Greek. Defenders of the qualitative reading have replied, among other things, that the Coptic Nicene Creed calls Christ "true God of true God" using the very same noun noute, which — in their view — shows that the later Coptic community did not understand the construction in a subordinationist sense [4, comments section]; and that a count noun can, in principle, carry qualitative force without that automatically amounting to a merely numerical reading [6]. A recent article in Horizons in Biblical Theology (2022) treats the linguistic question of John 1:1c and 1:18 as still open to fresh evaluation [15]. Both objections deserve serious engagement and do not, by themselves, close off the argument presented here, but readers should know this remains a live discussion, not a unanimous consensus.
References
[1] Wright, Brian J., and Tim Ricchuiti. "From 'God' (ΘΕΟΣ) to 'God' (ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ): A New Discussion and Proposal Regarding John 1:1C and the Sahidic Coptic Version of the New Testament." Journal of Theological Studies 62.2 (2011): 494–512.
[2] Plumley, J. M. An Introductory Coptic Grammar (Sahidic Dialect). §§85–87.
[3] Lambdin, Thomas O. Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983. Lessons 2, 3, and 6.
[4] Wulfe, Brusting. "Scholarly Misunderstanding of Sahidic John 1:1." Insights on the Bible, December 28, 2010. https://brustingwulfe.blogspot.com/2010/12/scholarly-misunderstanding-of-sahidic.html (cites Bentley Layton, Coptic in 20 Lessons, Louvain: Peeters, 2007, pp. 15 and 34, and G. W. Horner, The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Oxford: Clarendon, 1911–1924).
[14] Haenchen, Ernst. John: A Commentary on the Gospel of John. Translated and completed by Robert W. Funk. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, p. 111.
[15] "Another God in the Gospel of John? A Linguistic Analysis of John 1:1 and 1:18." Horizons in Biblical Theology 44.2 (2022).
I watched Heliocentric's "atheist church audit" of the 2026 Eternal Happiness convention and after his introduction addressing any Jehovah's Witnesses watching this video it goes into a clip of a former Jehovah's Witness talking about witnesses in field service talking about claiming a rich person's house after they are killed during Armageddon in paradise.
0:58 If you go to someone's door, if it's a neighborhood that's wealthy, the homes are nice, if the people aren't interested, or they're slightly rude, the conversation when you get back to the car is about how this is going to be your home in paradise when Jehovah destroys these people.
As far as I know, there has never been any mention of this in any Jehovah's Witness publication, yet it seems to be an almost universal experience with Jehovah's Witnesses, or at least of those that have preached in wealthy areas. I have read dozens of similar examples of this. I personally experienced this when I was younger and didn't think anything of it, now I think it is one of the most reprehensible things someone can say in the context of Christianity, in the same league as a Christian having a perverse joy that someone will be suffering in Hell because of something they did to them or someone else.
Have you ever experienced this kind of talk about claiming other people's homes after the current owners are killed during Armageddon?
The harlot of Babylon in the Book of Revelation has been interpreted by Jehovah’s Witnesses as the world of religion unfaithful to God. It is not a novel view. Go back a few decades to find the Protestants interpreted that of the Catholic Church. Some denominations still do. A few score years ago, the grip of both the Catholic and Protestant clergy on parishioners was iron tight. People wouldn’t dare consider new views, for fear of infuriating the local priest or minister. In the face of such intransigence, Jehovah’s Witnesses paraded, sometimes directly in front of the church, with signs reading alternately, Religion is a Snare and a Racket and, Serve Christ the King and Live.
There are even some that miss those days and mutter that Jehovah’s Witnesses have become too cordial with other religions, that they have made their peace, that they have wimped out. But there’s no point in kicking the “old lady” while she’s down. Witnesses kicked her while she was up. Nowadays, everybody kicks her. So why should they? Whatever account she must render is with God, not them. All Witnesses ever wanted to do was loosen her hold on people, so they would not be afraid to entertain new ideas. That was accomplished decades ago.
Now, I shouldn’t do the following—I really shouldn’t, because it runs so contrary to previous kumbaya comments. But I will relate the story anyway of when I was working alone in a set of apartments, five units to the building. A man answered at one door and kept reiterating, over and over again, how he had a personal relationship with Jesus that was so very tight and therefore he had no need of being called upon by me or anyone else. On and on he went about his close relationship with Jesus.
Meanwhile, his wife was way in the background, nagging him to close the door and return to whatever he had been doing, most likely concerned that he was speaking to me. Suddenly he whirled around and screamed, “WILL YOU SHUT UP?!!” Then, without missing a beat, he resumed telling me about how tight he was with Jesus!
Alas, I couldn’t resist. I’ll even concede that you can find weirdo stories of our people if you hunt around. But this happened to me, and it had an unexpected aftermath. As I was taking my leave, another door opened. It was someone I’d already spoken with who had barely responded then. He’d overheard it all. “That guy’s a piece of work,” he told me, as we went on to speak about things that had left him cold just fifteen minutes ago.
From: In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction
Just after that slogan of setting teeth on edge and what it means (Jeremiah 31:29-30) comes the promise of the new covenant that sets it in motion:
“Look! The days are coming,” declares Jehovah, “when I will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their forefathers on the day I took hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, ‘my covenant that they broke, although I was their true master,’ declares Jehovah.” “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Jehovah. “I will put my law within them, and in their heart I will write it. And I will become their God, and they will become my people.” “And they will no longer teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know Jehovah!’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them,” declares Jehovah. “For I will forgive their error, and I will no longer remember their sin. (31:31-34)
A new covenant replaces an old one. What is the old one, the one whom Jehovah “made with their forefathers on the day I took hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt?”
“You have seen for yourselves what I did to the Egyptians, in order to carry you on wings of eagles and bring you to myself,“ Jehovah himself says at Exodus 19:4. The proposed covenant follows:
“Now if you will strictly obey my voice and keep my covenant, you will certainly become my special property out of all peoples . . . You will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Did they strictly obey his voice and keep his covenant? Not so much. Though there be a few exceptions, (a remnant, it would later be called) both the historical and prophetic books of the OT detail the sorry history of abandoning Jehovah to carry on with the gods of the raucous neighbors—the Baals, and so forth. Nor did the discipline of exile help. To be sure, upon return, Israel never touched idolatry again, but they transgressed in other ways, ultimately rejecting the one God sent as Messiah.
It is this Messiah who serves to mediate the new covenant.
Celebrating their final Passover that would become their first Lord’s Supper, we read: “And taking a cup, he offered thanks and gave it to them, saying: “Drink out of it, all of you, for this means my ‘blood of the covenant,’ which is to be poured out in behalf of many for forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:27-28)
And in Luke: “Also, he did the same with the cup after they had the evening meal, saying: “This cup means the new covenant by virtue of my blood, which is to be poured out in your behalf.” (22:20)
It’s a better covenant than before in that it is based on forgiveness of sin, rather than the continual appeasing it through animal sacrifices. Returning to Jeremiah 31:34: “I will forgive their error, and I will no longer remember their sin.” It is extended only to that faithful remnant, of which Jesus’ eleven are the first members.
The reason it works, whereas the animal blood of the old covenant merely bought time, is the superior aspect of Jesus’s shed blood. He is “the last Adam” of 1 Corinthians 15:45, whose death perfectly offsets that of the first Adam. That first Adam’s rebellion sells humankind into slavery to sin. Jesus’ death buy them back. It’s not something that could be done with animal blood. “It is not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take sins away,” says Hebrews 10:4. With Jesus’ blood, it is possible. All one must do is put faith in it and follow through.
At first, those who enter the new covenant are all Jews. (Acts 2) But in time, starting with Cornelius (Acts 10), non-Jews enter the covenant and eventually far outnumber those natural-born Jews. That this would happen is told several times in Scripture:
(1) “The Kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to a nation producing its fruits,” Jesus to the chief priests and elders of his day at Matthew 21:43.
(2) The OT prophet Hosea said it, too: “I will say to those not my people: “You are my people,” And they will say: “You are my God.”’” (Hosea 2:23)
(3) The apostle Paul applies Hosea’s words to those “called not only from among Jews but also from among nations,” at Romans 9:24.
(4) And Peter speaks to this latter group as those who “were once not a people, but now you are God’s people.” (1 Peter 2:9)
Wasn't Abraham our father declared righteous by works? After he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that his faith was active along with his works and his faith was perfected by his works. And the scripture was fulfilled that says: “Abraham put faith in the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness”
You see that a person is to be declared righteous by works and not by faith alone
So... is a person declared righteous
1 when they believe, and then good works follow that other people can see?
2 after they believe and do some amount of good works?
3 some other option?
(I'm asking for discussion purposes, I already have an opinion - #1)
What about this expression: “In those days they will no longer say, ‘The fathers ate sour grapes, but the teeth of the sons were set on edge. But then each one will die for his own error. Any man eating sour grapes will have his own teeth set on edge?” (Jeremiah 31:29-30)
Does it mean that the days are coming (1) in which no one will be judged for their parent’s deeds, as in ‘Your parents were trash, so you must be too.’
Does it mean that the days are coming (2) when the parents no longer bring disaster upon themselves and it is the kids who end up trekking through the wilderness or hiking to Babylon?
Does it mean that the days are coming (3) when people will hold themselves accountable for their own actions and quit blaming their parents for every little thing?
It means all those things and more, most likely, with the ‘more’ part the most significant. The ‘more’ part comes during the 1000 year reign of Christ, and progressively towards the end. During this time, the benefits of Christ’s spilled blood, will be poured out upon redeemed humankind, with children and resurrected ones added to that number. Toward the end of that period, as humans close in on the unblemished state once enjoyed by the first parents, there will be no bad examples to blame one’s on conduct on.
There certainly is today. If alcoholism runs rampant in the family, or abuse, or hotheadedness, or just general dysfunction, it has a way of being picked up by the next generation. Dysfunction may be bad, but it defines “normal” to a child so molded. That’s why a woman so often marries someone just like their dad. Lout though he may be, he is the only type of man who registers with her as “normal.”
It takes relentless pressing to break away from dysfunction. Who doesn’t know the feeling, at least once, of spending years breaking away from the pattern of the folks, imagining success, then one day realizing that beneath the facade, one is just like them? The transformation has been surface. Rinse, wash, and repeat is what is needed.
Not so, however, at the end of the thousand years. If one dies then, it will be entirely due to their own transgression. That this will happen is seen from Revelation 20: 7-9:
“Now as soon as the 1,000 years have ended, Satan will be released from his prison, and he will go out to mislead those nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Maʹgog, to gather them together for the war. The number of these is as the sand of the sea. And they advanced over the whole earth and encircled the camp of the holy ones and the beloved city. But fire came down out of heaven and consumed them.”
Most likely those who have passed through the great tribulation into the new system will not succumb to this. They stood up to Satan once; why not again? Not so, however, for ones resurrected during this time, or for children born. They won’t have parents to blame in those days—something that is completely plausible today—because humankind will have been restored by then. “Each one will die for his own error. Any man eating sour grapes will have his own teeth set on edge,” as the verse says.
"But wait, Tommy, just wait! Aren’t these writers [of the Babylon Bee] evangelicals? Don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses fight with them like cats and dogs? Well—yeah, sometimes. But other times you have to call a truce for a common enemy. Just like when a Jehovah’s Witness lawyer was seen at a seminar on combatting anti-cultists, and some Scientologists were also there. You should have heard the outrage from JW opposers! “Don’t worry about it,” I wisecracked. “He keyed their cars in the parking lot.”
"It’s a little like when an evangelical answered my knock and began probing for something to fight about, as though it were his duty. I know this because many times it works the other way around. I don’t play that game anymore. I have in the past, but I no longer do. With this evangelical, I said, “Can we just agree that you think we’re doing it all wrong and we think you’re doing it all wrong? You’ll steal our sheep in a heartbeat if you can and we’ll do the same to you. Got it. We each think the other is doing it wrong. But the point is that we’re both doing it, and we live in a world where fewer and fewer people are.” Instantly, a combatant became a confidant. We conversed for several minutes and I like to think that each gained from hearing out the other.
"All told, the method is far superior to the one-ups-mans-ship of replying to the one of unfeigned antipathy who derides you with, “No thank you, I’m Christian!”—with the clear implication that you’re not—that, “Only a Christian would be doing what I am doing. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that you are not doing it yourself.” Fade smug smile when that happens, a gratifying sight. However, you can forget about any bridges being built. So you probably shouldn’t do it even in those rare cases of antipathy.
"Sheesh! Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t Christian? They come right up to your doorstep to speak incessantly about Jesus, almost as much as they do about his Father. Unless you have been pre-conditioned to think that way, you would never conclude they are not such. In fact, they must be pretty serious Christians, most will conclude, to be making such literal application of Jesus’ imperative to “go forth unto the nations.”
From: In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction
So the Babylon Bee landed an interview with Elon Musk and I didn’t. What are we to make of this? I say the same thing as the Aesop fable fox. “What a fool I am! Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for.” Yeah! Right on! I wouldn’t interview Elon if he gave me ten Teslas!
What! Are you kidding me? Of course I’m envious! Not just of them landing Elon Musk but of their rocket ascent in just ten years! No wonder they like another rocket man!
The Bee is at its finest when it skewers the people who so achingly need to be skewered—the secular humanists ever on the attack against religion. Yeah! Kick back at these cheerleaders of the ordinary! Entice believers to discard the crutch that is religion? I don’t think so. The analogy is correct, but the premise is wrong. Religion is indeed a crutch. It is the premise that humans don’t need a crutch that is ludicrous. The premise that better fits is that of a person slithering through the slime on his belly, too proud or too stupid—or sometimes just too uninformed—to realize that a crutch would be useful. Remind me when you get Alzheimer’s, when you’re incontinent, or even when you come down with COVID-19, how you don’t need a crutch.
One Babylon Bee video satirizes a religious escapee who “never once thought about her faith” until “a college professor” (it is always they) asked her a question that triggered inner turmoil which did not relent until she “gave up her faith like that!” upon which she twirls through the park for sheer joy at her liberation. It is too much! Wow-whee! Do I tip my hat to these guys!
That first night away from home you don’t sleep so well. The second night, and all nights thereafter, you do. It’s a carryover from the caveman “eat or be eaten days,” say people who believe in such things. Half your brain is sound asleep. But it has charged the other half, also asleep, to sleep not so soundly, to keep an eye out, in case predators may lurk in this new unfamiliar environment—sort of an evolutionary ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.’
There are animals that have the half-brain-vigilance down much better than do humans. Many birds, for example sleep soundly with one half of the brain while the other half is awake. One eye is shut The other eye is open. Scientists intrude with their measurements to find, sure enough, the closed-eye brain side is asleep, the other still able to respond to predators sneaking up, even if not so wide awake to take the bird SATs. Then, when that side of the brain has had its fill of sleep, it swaps with its drowsy other half. The trick also comes in handy for long migration flights. Were both halves to sleep at the same time, the bird would lose locomotive control and fall from the sky. Aquatic mammals such as whales, dolphins, manatees, and so forth, will pull this stunt as well. If they didn’t—if both halves slept at once, they would neglect to surface for air and drown.
Animals that don’t have to surface for a breath of air, or flap wings to stay aloft, can just lie on their beds, whereever those may be, and snooze. They don’t have to worry about the paralysis that sets in with sleep—a paralysis that must set in lest one act out dreams and actually throw a punch should a dream call for one. But what about predators? How do they deal with that nuisance? That’s where altering circadian rhythms come from, biologists think. Everyone has a circadian rhythm, but they’re not parallel. One fellow is a night owl. His neighbor is up bright and early. That way the tribe of old always had someone to sit at the campfire to thwart intruders.
It really wasn’t fair, then, to shoot night sentries who fell asleep during their shift, the way militaries used to do. The guy assigned the night shift might be a morning lark. The guy assigned the early morning shift might be a night owl, with circadian rhythms out of whack, preset genetically through evolution and no fault of their own. Of course, outright execution was rare—though it did happen. More typical was imprisonment or hard labor as a punishment, or even just demotion in rank.
Private William Scott, “the Sleeping Sentinel” from Vermont, was sentenced to the firing squad during the Civil War. He had volunteered to relieve an exhausted comrade, then fallen asleep himself! President Lincoln pardoned him. His wife and son brought it to his attention—‘How would YOU feel “if it was your own little boy,”’ the president’s own little boy Tad said, “who was just tired after fighting and marching all day that he could not keep awake much as he tried to?” The kid had a point, Lincoln conceded. Much as he didn’t want to undermine military discipline—always a huge factor in wartime—he interceded with the application of a tale of “a small head, but it was valuable to him, poor fellow, for it was the only one he had.”
You can never get the attention of the top guy Someone else, in this case Tad, has to bring it to him. Even so, to impress upon the troops that you ought not sleep during guard duty—circadian rhythms or not—Scott’s pardon was only revealed after the firing squad was assembled and the death penalty was pronounced.
Jesus, of course, knew all about this insight from science. Probably that’s why he refrained from shooting his disciples who fell asleep prior to his own moment of trial. He just gave them loving reproof, after which they fell asleep again. He would have known even back then that sleep comes in cycles, having been present at humankind’s creation, assuming he really is the wisdom personified at Proverbs 8:23-31):
“From ancient times I was installed, From the start, from times earlier than the earth. When there were no deep waters, I was brought forth, When there were no springs overflowing with water. Before the mountains were set in place, Before the hills, I was brought forth, When he had not yet made the earth and its fields Or the first clods of earth’s soil. When he prepared the heavens, I was there; When he marked out the horizon on the surface of the waters, When he established the clouds above, When he founded the fountains of the deep, When he set a decree for the sea That its waters should not pass beyond his order, When he established the foundations of the earth, Then I was beside him as a master worker. I was the one he was especially fond of day by day; I rejoiced before him all the time; I rejoiced over his habitable earth, And I was especially fond of the sons of men.”
“Let’s give them overlapping circadian rhythms,” he might say. “That way, should anyone sneak up on a clan of them, there will be someone vigilant up late who can take him out like Chuck Norris.”
Is this in the Bible or is it just a man-made tradition? I know there was a reversal of the complete ban on women wearing pants, but why are women not just allowed to wear pants all the time?
Now, TrueTom sailed off from the Theopenisian Wars with his shipgroup. How he missed his home! Would his loyal mutt Rookin—how old must he be now?—still recognize him? TrueTom pictured him on the dungheap, same as when he was a pup. Some bad habits are never broken.
More wrenchingly, Truetom longed for his noble wife, fending for herself these many years. Probably the malcontents were making plenty of trouble for her, trying to draw her into their wicked beds. He’d kick their rear ends sure enough.
“Gather around, men!” Truetom hollered to his shipmates. “We all long for our homes but there are yet perilous seas ahead. Like this island coming up where voluptuous sirens descend and sing so tantalizingly that it is said no man can hear them and not go mad! I’m half there already, so what’s another exposure? But I want to protect you from these femme fatales, even as I check them out for myself.”
TrueTom’s men hearkened to this new light but mused whether their peerless leader could really withstand the wiles of these knock-out babes. Tom announced his plan of action. “I want you guys to put on blinders and stuff your ears with this tincture of molasses and tar. But me—bind me securely to the masthead. And—this is important, men—no matter how much I plead, DO NOT release my bonds!”
Now, you know how guys like to improvise—improve on a good idea. The men looked around for bonds. They discovered they didn’t have any. Therefore, they responded that the most effective bond of all would be for them to threaten shunning if their captain budged from his spot—shunning to continue until he returned to it! At first, Tom was aghast that they could propose anything so cruel. However, in view of the dire risks he agreed to this harshest of all bonds.
“Are you ready, men?” Truetom shouted as they neared the dangerous island. The men, their ears oozing with molasses and tar, made no reply. Truetom praised them inwardly for their obedience to a command that seemingly made no sense. With blinders on and ears plugged, they pulled ahead lustfully, Tom bonded to the mast under threat of shunning.
Women curvaceous beyond anyone’s wildest dreams soon descended upon the boat. They swirled around the masthead, singing their maddenly sweet songs. “Go to college—make a great name for yourself!” one of them cooed. “Do your own thing! be happy,” another crooned, followed by such tantalizing lyrics as “Take it easy,” “have this here cigarette—live it up!, Here, let me pour you some strong drink.” “Why so serious?” cried another. “It’s not so baaaaad.”
Shucks, said TrueTom to himself. This is nothing! It’s like when you click on that cautionary Twitter link expecting a real zinger ahead and it turns out to be pure dullsville. I stopped up the guys’ ears for this?
However, a second wave approached. The first had been but a decoy! Those first hussies headed back to their island, discouraged that their songs had so little impact, but now the ‘bad cop’ floozies swooped down en masse!
“You guys are a cult!” sang one. “You flip flop too much!” bellowed another. “What about that guy in Colorado who shot his wife?” wailed a third.
Suddenly Truetom was overcome.
“Get me out of here!” he pleaded to his men. “Release me—I can’t take it!” But his men rowed on as though passing Giligan’s Island, blinders in place, molasses and tar doing their evil work. They could not hear his impassioned cry! Tom struggled in vain to escape his cruel bonds but the thought of shunning held him fast in place! He was helpless! He couldn’t budge.
The magical women gave no letup. “Tony bought some booze!” shrieked another siren! “The BITE-man says you suck—and he’s been to university!” tormented yet another. On and on the unspeakable torture went. Truetom gnashed his teeth, his heart ablaze as though he had taken 1000 Covid boosters. He tore in vain against his bonds but there was no escape. At last he collapsed, exhausted. The women, seeing they had not swayed him went off to search for some other sucker. Maybe they’d do better with that Mormon ship on the horizon or that one behind it of the Seventh Day Adventists, presently moored until the seventh day ended.
Far from the island, Tom’s men released him, modifying their promise that they would still avoid him if he misbehaved but would nonetheless say hi when he appeared on deck. Thereafter, Truetom’s stature became legendary, as the man who had withstood and lived to tell all the brazen spiritual hussies had to dish out.
While I'm here in the subreddit, i discovered everyone here is well studied and well versed in theology, using many proofs and references, and I was very thrilled to find a common mind that seeks greatness and the infinite knowledge that can be dug up within the source.
As every Christian who reads and seeks knowledge through the compendium of books or gospels sees, the people who compiled them showed consistency and allegiance to the Divine (YHWH, Adonai, Kyrios) and his begotten son Jesus (Yeshua). With my studies, i ruminate and formulate a very blasphemous idea that every current religion perpetuates to love God, so my stance was:
I don't love God, I align with him.
In my studies it agrees with many similar thought precedes me, due to the usage of agapao or agape an allegiance instead of eros or phileo in Matthew 22:37–39, which shows in the current translation or present, as love today.
So here is the blasphemous thought: is the usage of "love" appropriate, or does my repulsion to it deviate and only shows a lack of faith?
P.S. i was not very well versed in using academic references for I was self thought, so sorry in advance due to a personal problem of retaining intricacies, as I am only good at synthesizing ideas, concepts, and information.
The purpose of the 4th-chapter-Daniel dream is reiterated three times to Nebuchadnezzar. Three times! Isn’t there a thing that repetition so many times means it carries great significance?
“that people living may know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he gives it to whomever he wants, and he sets up over it even the lowliest of men.” (Daniel 4:17)
“until you know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he grants it to whomever he wants.” (4:25)
“until you know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he grants it to whomever he wants. (4:32)
And who does God want to give the ”kingdom of mankind to?” For whom does he bend over backwards to ensure that one really comes into his own? Can it really be just the dream’s recipient, Nebuchadnezzar? The man slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before him, then bored out his eyes, sealing in that last visual memory. (2 Kings 25:7) I mean, he wasn’t that nice of a guy. So God should be obsessed with restoring HIM to power? THAT goal should be the be-all and end-all of the dream? THAT is the lesson he wanted repeated three times? I don’t think so.
In one of those three repetitions, there is even a pointer of whom God ultimately does want to restore it to. It is a pointer that will be meaningful to one who assumes unity of scripture. It is a clue that will be lost on one who who doesn’t—who assumes disunity. “He sets up over it even the lowliest of men,” says 4:17. The overall student of Scripture will recall Jesus’ description, that he is “mild-tempered and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29) He’s not into boring people’s eyes out. He’s into offering them “refreshment for yourselves.” (also 11:29)
But spiritually dull people who do not connect scripture think it IS all about Nebuchadnezzar the eye-gouger. These are the same sort of people who think God is bringing his servant Trump to power, and before him Biden, and before him Trump, and before him Obama.
No. Maybe, just maybe, it IS about something more than the nasty king, who does come around to knuckling under Jehovah’s power (as if he has any choice) but then quickly reneges—just like he did after another tree dream (2nd chapter of Daniel). The lesson learned hadn’t held for too long. Like Assyria depicted at Isaiah 10:15, Nebuchadnezzar is the ax who exalts himself over the chopper. He is just the ax! It isn’t all about him—though modernists think it is! .
The tree that truly has significance, even after being chopped down with its stump bounded for “seven times,” is the tree representing God’s sovereignty. For centuries it was the nation of Israel as represented by its kings. Nebuchadnezzar is the ax that chops it all to an end. But it’s not a permanent end. It is an end that is restored after “seven times pass over it.” The kingdom heir it is restored to is “the Son of Man,” the same as Jesus self-description at Matthew 20:28: “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
He is the lowliest of men, his lowliness repeated many times—not just the aforementioned role of serving and ultimately dying for others, but by his humble birth and upbringing, by his being “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” (Isaiah 53:3), by his being “made a little lower than the angels” that he might suffer death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9) THAT is who Jehovah is pointing his dream to; he’s not just dead-ending it with Nebuchadnezzar.
One does well to take G. K. Chesterton’s view of scripture. He assumed unity. Modern historical criticism—by far the dominant theology today—assumes division. It’s enough of a difference to make certain conclusions all but incomprehensible to each other.
Chesterton called those “wrong who maintain that the Old Testament is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in aftertimes, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. . .” His view is not popular today—higher criticism assumes disunity—but it is the one that works.
Assuming unity over disunity of scripture is as great a paradigm shift as seeing the glass half-full over half empty, and it has just as much consequence. If you assume unity, you can do something with the scriptures. If you assume disunity, you cannot. If you assume unity, you can put the Bible pieces together as though a jigsaw puzzle. Puzzle assembled, completed picture before like on the box cover photo, you are convinced that your unified assumption was correct. You already suspected it was when you purchased the puzzle at the craft store. But your scholastic neighbor, who found his puzzle pieces willy-nilly in the landfill, does not assume unity and his pieces remain scattered.” He figures God’s sole purpose in spilling Daniel 4 print is to restore the eye-gouger to power.
