Theodore is was the Bishop of Mopsuestia in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, a town in the vicinity of Antioch. He was a fellow student of the much more famous Chrysostom. He is a good representative of the interpretive method that Antioch is known for, more historical/grammatical/literal and less allegorical like their Alexandrian counterparts. He is (in)famous for his association with Nestorianism. Nestorianism&#8217s namesake, Nestorius, was his pupil and became Archbishop of Constantinople in the year Theodore died. It was after Theodore&#8217s death that Nestorius was condemned and Theodore with him.

Yesterday I ended my break from teaching at church and began a series on the Gospel of John. Much of my reading includes modern commentaries but I&#8217m also using IVP&#8217s Ancient Christian Commenary on Scripture, as well as Theodore of Mopsuestia&#8217s full commentary on this gospel, also published by IVP. Unfortunately for this one, I can&#8217t (yet) have the fun of translating it myself. Except for fragments, the original (Greek) is lost and the text only survives in a Syriac translation. In the meantime however, this handy translation exists. It is a bit pricey but I guess you have to expect that from a book that won&#8217t have much popular appeal. So far I&#8217ve enjoyed reading it.

I wanted to read Theodore&#8217s commentary in particular because my reading of Nestorius&#8217 Bazaar and some other modern historical works led me to wonder if their condemnation was uncalled for (of course this thought is not new to me). The so-called &#8220Nestorian&#8221 church, or as some of them would prefer, the Church of the East, or the Assyrian Church of the East et al. (not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox) are apparently at the moment seeking reconciliation with the west. Since many Christian groups (including the broader group I generally find myself attached to) shamefully seem to be more interested in finding enemies than friends, this whole line of study appeals to me.

If you are interested in doing some of this reading yourself, I can recommend the following books:

1. A History of Christianity in Asia: Beginnings to 1500 by Samuel Hugh Moffett. Definitely the book to start with.
2. The Church of the East: Apostolic & Orthodox by Mar Bawai Soro.

I was thinking that I had recommended these before but I can’t seem to find the post. Anyway, here they are again if I have :)

You might recall that I was planning on talking about Theophilus of Antioch. This is still the case. I am actually preparing a copy of his apology and will start chatting about him as well when that is done. On the one hand, I don&#8217t expect that to take long but I’m about to start a few weeks of serious overtime at work, so I’m not sure I&#8217ll be able to get much done at all. We&#8217ll see.

In the meantime, pick up some good books and get some reading done.

So I was planning on starting to blog about Theophilus of Antioch, but that will wait. At the end of the week I received a request for comment about a bit of Greek from Epiphanius&#8217 Panarion. Figured I would share about that.

Here is the text, taken from Migne 42, columns 736 and 738:

Ἐν γὰρ Σικίμοις, τουτἐστιν ἐν τῇ νυνὶ Νεαπόλει, θυσίας οἱ ἐπιχώριοι τελοῦσιν εἰς ὄνομα τῆς Κόρης, δῆθεν ἐκ προφάσεως τῆς θυγατρὸς Ἰεφθάε, τῆς ποτε προσενεχθείσης τῷ θεῷ εἰς θυσίας· καὶ τοῖς ἠπατημένοις τοῦτο γέγονεν εἰς βλάβην εἰδωλολατρείας καὶ κενολατρίας. Ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα τοῦ Φαραὼ τιμήσασαν τὸν δοῦλον τοῦ θεοῦ Μωϋσέα, ἀνελομένην τε καὶ ἀναθρέψασαν, διὰ τὸ περίφημον τότε τοῦ παιδίου ὑπὲρ τὸ δέον τιμήσαντες Αἰγύπτιοι ἀντὶ θεοῦ, καὶ τοῦτο εἰς κακὴν παράδοσιν τοῖς ἀνοήτοις παρέδωκαν εἰς θρησκείαν. Καὶ προσκυνοῦσι τὴν Θέρμουτιν τὴν θυγατέρα τοῦ Ἀμενὼφ, ἕως τότε Φαραώ, ἐπειδή, ὡς προεῖπον, ἀνέθρεψε τὸν Μωῦσέα. Καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα ὅμοια γέγονεν ἐν κόσμῳ εἰς πλάνην τῶν ἠπατημένων, οὐ τῶν ἁγίων αἰτίων ὄντων τισὶν εἰς πρόσκομμα, τῆς διανοίας τῶν ἀνθρώπων μὴ ἠρεμούσης, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ τὰ πονηρὰ ἐκτρεπομένης.

*ἤτοι γὰρ ἀπέθανεν ἡ ἁγία Παρθένος, καὶ τέθαπται, ἐν τιμῇ αὐτῆς ἡ κοίμησις, καὶ ἐν ἁγνείᾳ ἡ τελευτή, καὶ ἐν παρθενίᾳ ὁ στέφανος· ἤτοι ἀνῃρέθη, καθὼς γέγραπται· Καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτῆς διελεύσεται ῥομφαία· ἐν μάρτυσιν αὐτῆς τὸ κλέος, καὶ ἐν μακαρισμοῖς τὸ ἅγιον αὐτῆς σῶμα· δι᾿ ἧς φῶς ἀνέτειλε τῷ κόσμῳ· ἤτοι δὲ ἔμεινε. Καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἀδυνατεῖ τῷ θεῷ πάντα ποιεῖν, ὅσαπερ βούλεται· τὸ τέλος γὰρ αὐτῆς οὐδεὶς ἔγων.* Πέρα τοῦ δέοντος οὐ χρὴ τιμᾷν τοὺς ἁγίους, ἀλλὰ τιμᾷν τὸν αὐτῶν Δεσπότην. Παυσάσθω τοίνυν ἡ πλάνη τῶν πεπλανημένων. Οὔτε γὰρ θεὸς ἡ Μαρία, οὔτε ἀπ᾿ οὐρανοῦ ἔχουσα τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ συλλήψεως ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός, κατ᾿ ἐπαγγελίαν δέ, ὥσπερ ὁ Ἰσαάκ, οἰκονομηθεῖσα. Καὶ μηδεὶς εἰς ὄνομα ταύτης προσφερέτω· ἑαυτοῦ γὰρ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπόλλει· μήτε πάλιν ἐμπαροινείτω ἐξυβρίζων τὴν ἁγίαν Παρθένον. Μὴ γὰρ γένοιτο. οὐ συνήφθη σαρκὶ μετὰ τὴν κύησιν, οὐδὲ πρὸ τῆς κυήσεως τοῦ Σωτῆρος.

I digitized the text myself. Hopefully there are no errors but a number of the diacriticals were a bit fuzzy (the scan was of pretty poor quality and I didn&#8217t have time to run down to the DTS library). The bits my friend was interested in between the asterisks, and specifically the phrase ἤτοι δὲ ἔμεινε.

One of the fun bits of this is that was first translated into English in the 90&#8217s, which means no translation on the internet (that I know of). Since I don&#8217t own a copy of the printed translation, I had to do this the hard way.

At first I was a bit confused on why the paragraph preceeding the one about Mary was about the daughter of Pharaoh who adopted Moses but eventually realized some sort of parallel was being drawn. Looking into the paragraph previous to that would probably be more instructive though I have not yet had time to do so. But as it turns out I don&#8217t think it is relevant to the question, so it can be skipped anyway.

My friend provided a rough translation of the text between the asterisks. I here provide my take on the whole last paragraph.

For one option is that the holy virgin died, and was buried, her sleep in honor, her end in chastity and crowned in her virginity. Or perhaps she was killed, just as it is written, and a sword will pierce through her soul, her credit into the martyrs, her body holy in blessedness, through which light entered the world. Or she remained. For is it not possible for all things to be done by God, whatever He wishes? For no one knows her end. We ought not to honor the saints beyond what is necessary, but to honor their master. So then let us end the deception which is leading astray. For neither is Mary God, nor does she have a body from heaven but from the conception of a man and a woman, being raised according to promise, as Isaac. And let no one give offerings in her name, for he will destroy his own soul. And let no one behave insolently toward the holy virgin. May it never be! For neither did she have intercourse after the conception, nor before the conception of the savior.

So, some thoughts.

• ἤτοι δὲ ἔμεινε (or she remained). He gave three options that he had seen. First was that she had left the world without dying. My friend did not find this convincing and neither did I. That is far too much to interpret out of that simple phrase. The second option was that &#8220she remained alive.&#8221, the third &#8220she still tarries on the earth.&#8221 The second does not make much sense to me given Epiphanius&#8217 first option above unless it also means the she was still alive. After all, if &#8220she remained alive&#8221 but eventually died of old age, this described the first situation exactly. This leaves only the third interpretation as a possibility, that there was a tradition stating that Mary continued to live, physically, on the earth even until that day. Someone might argue based on the aorist tense of the verb that she could no longer remain but that is taking the tense too far. Though on this interpretation a present makes more sense, the aorist could have been used to highlight the idea that she remained/did not die a couple centuries before. Tense in Greek is a matter of presentation, not reality per se.
• My friend also mentioned the parallel in John 21:22 about John remaining. This is actually a great parallel, and somewhat funny. In terms of meaning, some had mistaken Jesus&#8217 statement that John would remain as a statement that John would never die. The gospel corrects this in verse 23. But it does show that readers could read this kind of statement that way.
• A bit on the quotation from Luke 2:35, and a sword will pierce through her soul. It strikes me &#8220soul&#8221 in Luke is appropriately rendered as such, but perhaps read differently by some so as to give rise to this tradition. For those who don&#8217t know Greek, the word there (ψυχή) can both refer to what we call &#8220soul&#8221 but also more broadly to a person&#8217s whole being, or life. Reading it that way, Luke seems to prophecy that she would be killed with a sword.
• ἐμπαροινείτω ἐξυβρίζων - I am not entirely sure how to take this. It is clear that it expresses some inappropriate attitude toward Mary. Given the rejoinder is based on Mary&#8217s continued virginity, I wonder if the trespass in mind is sexual in nature.
• For those less familiar with extra-biblical traditions about Mary, she is called a child of promise like Isaac because apocryphal accounts have her mother (Anne) barren, until her father (Joachim) fasted forty days and nights. As far as I know the earliest account of all this is the Protoevangelion of James, a document I have discussed before. The parallel with Isaac is even mentioned there. Maybe Epiphanius has this document in mind.

So I think that is my first foray into Epiphanius. I&#8217m sure that I&#8217m wrong about something, so critique away :)

So, what has been going on guys? Things have been rather quiet around here. I don&#8217t expect anyone to still be around...but hi anyway! Now begins the obligitory &#8220I have not blogged in like forever&#8221 post.

Alright, some factoids for those who care. My next post will actually have real content ;)

• I still live in Dallas. I still have one wife and three kids. I also now own fish.
• I am still a developer by trade and I still love it. I am also still at the same job I was last time. Lots of tech stuff has changed over the last few years but you guys may not really care about that. If so, follow my technical blog. I have actually been updating things there.
• My forays into early Christianity have continued. I have spent less time in the world of textual criticism and manuscript reading. TC itself isn&#8217t that huge of an interest for me but I do enjoy manuscript reading still. Need to do more of that...
• Perhaps the most mind-opening study I have been doing has been in far eastern Christianity, as in east of the Eastern Orthodox, among the so-called "Assyrian Orthodox." There is a lot of interesting stuff there and a lot more for me to learn.
• In the meantime I actually studied a little Latin, but just enough to make me feel guilty for quitting again. I think I made it through a little over a quarter of Wheelock this time.
• I am still attending FBC Parker, a reformed Baptist church in Parker, TX. Strangely enough, I happen to be in the first long break from teaching that I&#8217ve had in years. It has been refreshing, but I am anxious to start back. I plan on starting with a study of the Gospel of John. Related, Richard Bauckham is such a valuable asset :)
• I am currently studying the only extant letter of Theophilus of Antioch, his letter to Autolycus. I hope to start blogging on it next week. You have to start somewhere.
• I have this problem. As a web developer, I feel the need to write my own blog site. Most web developers are smart enough not to think this way but, alas, it is a burden I bear. I have had a new version of it for quite some time but this blog was not on it. Problem #2 is that if my blog isn&#8217t up to snuff technically, I don&#8217t want to use it. This actually has contributed quite a bit to my silence over the last year. This will not make any sense to any of you. Like I said, I have a problem :) Things are mostly converted over now though I have some old image links to update, some content to fix, some urls to make backwards-compatible and some styling to do. I should get most of this fixed soon, but I won&#8217t let that keep me from my blogging this time!

My stalwart readers, if you still exist, I look forward to chatting with you :)

For the last several Sundays I have been taking our adult morning study group through a survey of early Christianity. It has been a lot of fun. Also, I know there are some out there in the ether that are listening to the recordings, so I've been meaning to post the readings (and discussion questions when I have them)...and here they are (or were), including the readings I'm taking the group through this Sunday. I hope someone finds this beneficial.

July 11

• The Didache (http://earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html)

Discussion Questions

1. Chapters 1-5 are about the way of life and the way of death. Compare and contrast the exhortations in this section to the NT’s teaching on these matters, especially the preaching of Jesus.
2. Compare and contrast their practice of baptism with our own.
3. Compare and contrast their practice of the eucharist and our own.
4. What problems are the instructions about itinerant apostles and prophets trying to avoid
5. Other than baptism and the eucharist, what does this document mention as practices that the Christians were to practice when they gather for worship.

July 18

• The Epistle of Barnabas 15-16 (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/barnabas-lightfoot.html)
• First Clement 40-44 (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/1clement-lightfoot.html)
• Ignatius’ Epistle to the Ephesians 3-6 (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/ignatius-ephesians- lightfoot.html)
• The Martyrdom of Polycarp 9-11 (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp- lightfoot.html)
• The Shepherd of Hermas 1-4(http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/shepherd-lightfoot.html)

August 1

Justin Martyr (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/justin.html)

• Dialogue with Trypho 12 – Troubles with the Jews
• Dialogue with Trypho 29 – Comments on the Scriptures
• First Apology 4 – Condemned by Gentiles
• First Apology 31 – The Hebrew prophets
• First Apology 61 – Baptism
• First Apology 65-68 – The Eucharist, worship and conclusion
• Second Apology 10 – Christ and Socrates

Irenaeus (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.toc.html)

• Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 10 – The unity of the faith
• Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 11 – An example of Gnostic teaching
• Against Heresies, Book 4, Chapters 5-6 – About God and Jesus

August 8

• Melito of Sardis - "Concerning the Passover" (http://www.kerux.com/documents/KeruxV4N1A1.asp)
• Hippolytus of Rome - "The Apostolic Tradition" (http://www.bombaxo.com/hippolytus.html)

Discussion Questions

1. How does Melito's view of the fulfillment of the types of the Old Testament jive with your views?
2. Though Melito is highly regarded among the fathers, some of his Christological statements seem to me to go in directions that might later have been deemed heretical. Are there any you can find?
3. Concerning "The Apostolic Tradition", what are the primary offices and their roles in the church?
4. While reading "The Apostolic Tradition" you will likely notice differences between their practices and our own. Instead of critiquing their practices, think past them to the ideas that they convey. Then compare them with the ideas behind our practices.

This week has been very busy. There are, of course, the usual culprits like work and family. This week was a bit different because of an event we had tonight at church.

Our church is unusually conscious of modern Protestantism's historical roots in the Reformation. We had a fellowship this weekend, one weekend after Reformation day, so it was pretty natural to theme it around the subject of the Reformation. And we wanted it to be educational.

So what we did is enacted a public dialog of sorts. Everyone was encouraged to come dressed in 16th century garb (many did). We had an indulgence seller who quoted little indulgence seller diddies from back in the day. We had one representative of the Catholic church (Cardinal Sadoleto) followed by Calvin, Zwingli and Luther. The material for each was pulled from their writings. Nothing other than basic introductory matter and connecting material was contrived so that everyone could be sure that they were learning something authentic.

The material for Sadoleto and Calvin was drawn from the book A Reformation Debate . Luther's material was pulled from the introduction to his 95 these that he wrote later in life and his 95 theses themselves. Zwingli's discussion was around the sacraments and was pulled from his letter to the princes of Germany, which can be found in the volume On Providence and Other Essays

Overall, it was fun. Tiring, but fun.

Just saw this post over at The Way of the Fathers blog All of Migne? Not quite. But I'm glad to see it online.

Thanks for pointing it out, Mike.

Delphi, classically famous home of an oracle to Apollo, is a sight to see in person. A few weeks ago my wife and I spent a few hours there. Since we were already tired from hiking in Meteora and it was rather warm, the trek wasn’t particularly easy. But the ruins…the ruins were awesome.

Here are the pictures of Delphi. I will be posting pictures of other sites at a later time. Enjoy!

I do have more pictures. If you have a particular need for more pictures of Delphi, do let me know.

Fantastic catch at one of the Half Price Books near work today. Spent way too much money though. Of those I got, the following four are the ones I am most looking forward to reading:

• Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist by Mikeal C. Parsons.
• Constantine and Eusebius by Timothy D. Barnes.
• The Fathers of the Church by Mike Aquilina (find his blog here)
• LaSor's 2 volume Handbook of New Testament Greek

Yay! New Books!

I just finished reading Voting About God in Early Church Councils.

I found the book quite interesting. You can find a short review here.

Today I finished up Mark 13 in the adult Sunday School class. We’ve been on the chapter for several weeks now and we’ve covered a lot of interesting material, but it is time to move on. It has actually seemed longer than it has actually taken because of something that is key to understanding Mark 13, and this is that Mark 13 is just a thematic continuation of both chapters 11 and 12.

An Unfortunate Disassociation

It is too frequent that various things, such as bad verse divisions, bad chapter divisions, and mistranslations lead to missing the thematic unity of two bits of Scripture. In some cases the material itself can lead people astray when they aren’t really paying attention. I believe both a bad chapter division and a seeming change of material has led to a drastic misunderstanding of how Mark 13, his version of the so-called “Olivet Discourse”, functions within its context.

This will be a known fact to most, but to some it may be relevant, and that is to remember that the chapters and verses were added to our Bibles only in the last few hundred years. These breaks are often misleading and occasionally completely wrong. In the case of Mark 13, the chapter break is appropriate but still misleading. There is a significant change in setting, which makes the chapter break okay, but for some it might be misleading because it separates that material from what came before. And all of the material in the chapter is very closely related, so the grouping is appropriate there. But if the chapter break between 12 and 13 has caused too much discontinuity, it is doing more harm than good. So what is this theme that times them all together?

The Rejection of the Israel and the Exaltation of Messiah

So if there is a theme that combines chapters 11 through 13, I would argue that it is the rejection of unrepentant Israel and its leadership and the raising of Jesus to his proper place, King of Israel. This theme is communicated both implicitly and explicitly through four primary vehicles: symbolic events, Old Testament allusions/quotations, debates and direct statements. The following list will cover only 11 and 12; chapter 13 will get its own treatment.

Symbolic Events

The following pericopes communicate this theme through symbolic events:

• The Cursing of the Fig Tree and the “Cleansing” of the Temple (11:12-20) – Jesus approaches a fig tree that bears no fruit because figs are not yet in season. Yet he curses the tree anyway. He then goes into the temple and chastises the merchants in the temple (and by extension, the chief priests and experts in the law that allowed them to be there – this is why they were angry). He then returns to the fig tree, and it is withered. The placement of the temple incident between them is done to symbolically say that the temple and those who run it will be cursed. And I put “cleansing” in quotes above because I think it has nothing to do with cleansing; like the fig tree, God intends to kill it, not heal it.

Old Testament Allusions and Quotations

The following pericopes communicate this theme through quotations and allusions to the Old Testament:

• The Triumphal Entry (11:1-11) – Those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem welcomed him quoted from Ps 118, a psalm of David. Who is he one who comes in the name of the Lord? He is the king. The statement right after, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” makes the association of Jesus with David hard to miss. The exaltation of Jesus was coming.

Direct Statements

• The Parable of the Tenants (12:1-12) – Like their ancestors, the Jewish leadership rejects God’s prophets. In this case they will reject God’s greatest messenger, his son. The result? What they have to tend (the people of God) will be taken away and will be given to another.
• Exposition of Psalm 110:1 (12:35-37) – Jesus attempts to raise the level of understanding of the crowd regarding the exalted status of the Messiah.
• Warnings about Experts in the Law (12:38-40) – Direct condemnation of the “experts in the law”.
• The Widow’s Offering (12:41-44) – Jesus praises the poor widow who gives all she has, saying she is giving a greater gift than the rich. Seemingly harmless, its placement in the narrative makes it clear that this is meant to be a condemnation of the leadership of Israel, who would be rich in comparison to this woman yet lacking in their faithful giving.

Debates

The following pericopes communicate this theme by showing Jesus debate (and win against) the religious leaders.

• The Authority of Jesus (11:27-33) – Jesus trips up the Jewish leadership by bringing up John the  Baptist. Thematically this ties in well with the place of John as Elijah as forerunner of Jesus, and how that is bound up with Malachi’s expectation of judgment/refining of Israel.
• Paying Taxes to Caesar (12:13-17) – The Pharisees and Herodians try to trip Jesus up with tax questions, but Jesus amazes them with his answer.
• Marriage and the Resurrection (12:18-27) – The Sadducees attempt to beat Jesus in a theological squabble by coming up with a question about resurrection and marriage. Jesus rejoins by telling them they don’t really have a clue.
• The Greatest Commandment (12:28-34) – An expert in the law asks Jesus a question about the greatest commandment. Jesus answered wisely and “no one any longer dared to question him.”

The Olivet Discourse

So how does Mark 13, the Olivet Discourse, fit into this theme? For most it does not, because they rip it out of its context and put it into the future because they don’t understand the imagery and allusion that dominates this chapter. The discourse is of course looking to the future, but not to ours. After all, Jesus himself said “Truly I say to you that this generation will certainly not pass away before all these things have happened.” And if you see that, and can read the signs in the allusions, the general point is fairly clear. I will explore this more in a later post, but a few points to get you started:

1. The destruction of the temple. If a crazy arsonist were to come to my house and set fire to it, that would seriously ruin my day. But what would be the larger ramifications of it? Other than him going to jail and me having a huge hassle on my hands, probably minimal. But what if someone, say Iran, firebombed and burned down the White House? The ideological ramifications of that are huge. They just set fire to the centerpiece of the greatest power in the western world! In the same way, a destruction of Jerusalem and its temple is a big deal symbolically. Who cares if Timbuktu is overthrown? God did not make a covenant with them. But how big a deal is it if the temple of God’s own people is destroyed?
2. If the temple is destroyed, the symbolic centerpiece of Israel, what does that say about the spiritual state of Israel? The answer is seen in the parable of the tenants: Israel is consistently wicked, and those who tend that vineyard must be destroyed.
3. It fits in well from a time-table perspective because of the temporal scoping you 13:30; the temple is to be destroyed within their lifetimes. This, of course, makes great sense in the context of the parable of the tenants. God sends his prophets over and over and they are repeatedly rejected and/or killed. At the end the owner sends his son. This is why the prophecy makes sense where it is, because it is discussing the punishment that generation gets for rejecting the Son. Put this in the distant future and you miss the point entirely. They needed to be destroyed because they killed the son.
4. The ideas expressed in the Olivet Discourse, like the ideas in both chapters 11 and 12, are ultimately what gets Jesus killed. He made enemies of the leadership by talking of their spiritual apostasy. His talk culminates in the dramatic warnings of chapter 13. Immediately after this section, 14:1 moves on to their plans to kill Jesus. And what shows up as the first charge against Jesus in Mark 14 when he is brought before the high priest? “We heard him saying ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands and after three days I will build another not made with hands.” The high priest and his cohorts were quite aware that statements and stances against the temple was an attack on them, not on the temple itself.

Absent from the lists above is how the Olivet Discourse contributes to the theme via Old Testament allusion (it is full of them), symbolism (lots of that too) and direct discourse (and that). This will be treated in another post, because these issues deserve their own treatment.

Conclusion

In most treatments of Mark 13 that I have heard, it is disconnected thematically from what is around it. For the most part this likely has to do with confusion around its meaning. Most read it, see the hyperbolic language, miss its Old Testament roots and punt this whole discourse into the future. This, in turn, separates the discourse thematically from 11 and 12, because a chat of the distant future is of no relevance to the spiritual state of Israel at that time. Consequently, they actually end up missing the point of the entire thing.

Reading the discourse this way is quite unusual for those of us who grew up in southern evangelicalism. It took quite a bit of reading and reflection before it really sunk in for me, though now it seems the obvious direction to take it. Soon we’ll start diving into the chapter and see where it takes us.