There's something about Onesimus

In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul mentions Tychicus and Onesimus, whom he sent to the Colossians specifically to convey information (and presumably also to deliver the letter). In his letter to Philemon, Paul discusses Onesimus and his abscondence as slave from his master and subsequently contrition, conversion and return. But as casual and friendly as all this may seem, there is something quit suspicious about the whole affair.

Most forms of early Christianity were illegal in the Roman empire (on account of them being "atheistic", that is without idols, and their objections to the obligatory worship of the state and emperor) and Paul would have been very careful with using his friends' real names. When a fugitive slave got caught he was severely punished, and by harboring a runaway, Paul himself was violating Roman law (whilst in prison). Paul would also have been very careful to not openly discuss politics, or refer to certain military events, lest he be taken for a revolutionary rather than a theologian (Acts 21:38).

Escaped slaves were punished severely and Paul would not have sent one half way through the empire carrying a self-incriminating letter.

Paul wrote Colossians and Philemon mere years before the Great Jewish Revolt would culminate into general Titus' destruction of the temple of YHWH, which in turn meant the end of Judaism as it had existed for a millennium. The magnitude of this disaster can not possibly be overstated, but what might help is to imagine that on 9/11 not just the World Trade Center was destroyed but also the heart of Washington DC, and that millions of Americans had been hanged in the streets and the rest deported to Afghanistan.

Paul saw the holocaust of 70 AD coming, and his writings largely dealt with trying to prevent it, namely by hammering on the importance of unarmed resistance and respectful dialogue. The temple was finally destroyed simply because certain Jewish factions (known as Zealots) foolishly decided to raise up arms against the Roman army. The evangelists, who wrote after the destruction, largely dealt with the question of what was to become of the Jewish mission to be a blessing to all people (Genesis 12:3).

It seems unlikely that Paul would invest his precious resources into a note that was both violently incriminating and theologically rather flimsy, and more so that this flimsy letter went viral in the early Christian world. In those days, correspondence was colossal, and it's an enigma why Paul's letter to Philemon became one of the most popular texts in human history.

The obvious answer is that we moderns have this work pegged entirely different from how the original audience viewed it.

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Onesimus.html

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil bad from the start? Nah... That tree, including its fruits, was as perfect as the rest of Paradise, even 'a delight to the eyes and desiring to make wise'.

But Adam and Eve misapplied the fruits by eating them. Try eating a MacDonald's billboard and you'll get it. Also see Proverbs 3:5.

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Misunderstanding_Bible/Tree_Knowledge_Bad.html

All Scripture is God-breathed?

The story of Jannes and Jambres is not Biblical, but fortunately ALL WRITING is God-breathed and useful for teaching.

All proof is welcome, but not if it's no proof.

To declare that the Bible is the one and only Word of God, folks most often cite 2 Timothy 3:16. There Paul seems to inform Timothy that the Bible is God-breathed, in stark contrast to other writings, which are the mere fumblings of man. What very few of these folks seem to notice is that just eight verses prior, Paul refers to the legend of Jannes and Jambres, which is wildly extra-Biblical (2 Timothy 3:16).

Let's, therefore, have a calm and composed look at the wisdoms dispensed in 2 Timothy 3:15-16:

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/God_Breathed.html

The curious case of the name Golgotha

Golgotha is the name of the place where Jesus was crucified. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and John mention the name Golgotha, but add that this name means κρανιον τοπος (kranion topos; meaning: place of a skull, Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, John 19:17). Luke merely mentions that the place was called Skull, using the same wording (Luke 23:33; by some translations interpreted as Calvary). It's obviously very important that the reader realizes that the death of Jesus occurred on The Skull, but what's with that? Every detail of the gospels was carefully chosen and nostalgia was certainly not a concern. It must mean something.

Jesus dies "at the Skull" -- what's with that?

Driven by nostalgia and super-hero worship, early Christian relic-hunters scoured Jerusalem's immediate environs in search for a place that looked like a skull, and Jerusalem's lands being quite cavernous, it didn't take them long to find one. Quite conveniently, the place they identified as the Skull happened to already be enclosed by a Venusian temple from the time of emperor Hadrian. True to form they re-declared it holy, put a fence around it and began to charge admission.

Others believed that the place called Skull was in fact a place of execution or burial, assuming that there would be skulls all over the place. But a place like that would first of all violate Jewish law and would not exist (Numbers 19:16, Deuteronomy 21:23, also see Ezekiel 39:15 and Josephus, Apion.ii-29-30, "not to let anyone lie unburied"), secondly be known by a plural epithet (skulls), and thirdly more likely be known as a place of bones rather than just of skulls. Still, the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was close to where He was crucified (John 19:41), and tombs usually existed in clusters or necropoleis (Matthew 8:28, 27:52). The second century document called Epistula Apostolorum explicitly states that not the place of Jesus' crucifixion but rather the place where he was buried was called Kranion, or Skull (verse 9). But still, there seems to be very little reason to refer to an entire graveyard as Place of the Skull, then or now.

Slightly more critical Bible critics realized that the ratio between the importance of Golgotha in the gospels and the importance of Golgotha in the rest of ancient writings was thoroughly askew. Why would the evangelists emphasize a place that no one else ever mentions? They surely were not tour guides pitching an important landmark for us to visit, because if they had been, they would certainly have also told us where that place precisely was. They don't.

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Golgotha.html

Zeus

The name Ζευς (Zeus) belongs to the chief deity of the Greeks, who was known to the Romans as Jupiter. The genitive of Zeus is Dios (Διος), which corresponds to an ancient Proto-Indo-European root that expressed brightness of sky and secondarily clarity of vision. From that root come the familiar words dio and deus, meaning god, divine, meaning godly, and diva, meaning deified (feminine), as well as the name of the Vedic deity Dyaus Pitra (Bright-Sky Father).

Several New Testament names derive either from the name Zeus, or from its parent root and one peculiar adjective: διοπετης (diopetes), which combines διος (dios) and either the verb πετομαι (petomai), meaning to fly, or the verb πιπτω (pipto), meaning to fall. It denotes something both divine and falling or having fallen, and appears to have been used for sacred objects that apparently had come falling out of the sky.

This word is used only once in the New Testament, namely in Acts 19:35, which reads: "the city of the Ephesians is guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of the [or: that being the] διοπετης (diopetes)." Also note the obvious similarities with the qualities of both Jesus (Colossians 1:15, John 3:13 and 6:38), satan (Luke 10:18, Revelation 12:9) and Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12).

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/DictionaryG/z/z-e-u-sfin.html

Blastus

The name Blastus occurs only once in the Bible. Acts 12:20 tells us how Herod Agrippa I had grown vexed about the people of Tyre and Sidon. What he was so upset about isn't told but the people of Tyre and Sidon were fearing his intervention and managed to entice Herod's chamberlain Blastus to plead for peace. During this meeting Herod met his untimely demise but what became of Blastus, the story doesn't tell.

The name Blastus is the same as the noun βλαστος (blastos), meaning shoot, bud, embryo, germ or even blossom. The phrase ο του βλαστος καιρος literally means "the season of (its) blastos" and denotes Spring.

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Blastus.html

Why we are called Abarim Publications

Abarim is the name of a mountain or mountain range in the vicinity of the Plain of Moab, just east of Israel. This mountain is so very special because Moses was given a birds-eye view of the promised land of Israel (Numbers 27:12, Deuteronomy 32:48-52). After he had seen it he was 'gathered to his people,' and he was never to enter what he had seen and towards which he had led the people for forty years of suffering and wars. The reason that Moses could not enter was that he had struck the water-giving rock at Meribah with his rod (as he was told to do before — Exodus 17:6), while he was this time told to speak to it, while holding on to his rod.



The water-giving rock is an open allusion to the Messiah (and the name of Moses' successor Joshua is the Hebrew form of the Greek name Jesus) and striking it comes very close to the way Jesus was treated before his crucifixion. The task of Moses was to verbally surrender the Law of God to humanity, and any show of physical force in this regard is both severely tempting and highly corruptive. Still, Moses, the friend of God and the embodiment of the Torah, was kept in God's ultimate esteem. When he died God Himself buried him in the valley in the land of Moab (Deuteronomy 34:6), close to Mount Abarim. Moses' body was even such a prize that none less than Michael the arch-angel and the Devil entered into a dispute over it (Jude 1:9).

We have chosen the name Abarim Publications (after Jeremiah 22:20) because we understand that neither our work, nor what we have seen, nor that we have seen, is salvific. What we do belongs to the wilderness years; no one has ever been reasoned into either the Promised Land, heaven or the New Creation.

But the Law of God is of extreme importance, and the study of it essential, even if it brings us no further than Abarim.

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Abarim.html

Lucifer, pleased to meet you

Doubtlessly much to the chagrin of fans, Lucifer is not a personal name and it certainly is not the personal name of the devil.

Pleased to meet you -- hope you know my name!

The word lucifer is a common Latin word and occurs in the Old Testament in Job 11:17 (= the dawn) and Job 38:32 (= some constellation), Psalm 110:3 (= the dawn), Isaiah 14:12 (see below), and once in the New Testament, in 2 Peter 1:19 (= φωσφορος, phosphoros, the Morning Star or Venus, see below).

Of all English, German and Dutch translations of the Bible, only the King James Version and the Darby Translation mention Lucifer and that only in Isaiah 14:12. All other occurrences of the word lucifer are translated as "morning star," "shining one" or "day star" or something to that extent in all European translations over the last four centuries.

Revelation 2:28 and 22:16 also speak of the morning star, but the Latin Vulgate uses stella matutina; literally star of the morning.

The only time that Lucifer could possibly be perceived as a personal name is in Isaiah 14:12, where the Lord makes the observation: "How you have fallen from heaven, lucifer, son of the dawn!". This observation is part of a larger statement addressed to the king of Babylon (14:4), in which Babylon's fall from grace is discussed. Babylon's prior rise to grace isn't mentioned in this chapter, but is part of the general rule that everything belongs to God and whatever grows, grows because the Lord makes it grow (see for instance Isaiah 45:1-7). Hence Babylon could not have risen to prominence without the blessing of YHWH, and its fall is due to Babylon's desire for wealth and power.

A similar sentiment is recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, where the prophet speaks of the king of Tyre, "You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty; you were in Eden, the garden of God" (Ezekiel 28:12-13). The Tyrians and the Phoenicians in general had built a highly successful empire on the basis of respect and free trade, and had achieved such great levels of skills and wisdom that Solomon had asked them to build the Temple of YHWH in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 2). Sadly, even the Phoenicians became corrupt and were wiped out by the Romans (read our article on the name Hannibal for more details).

Because the archangel Michael kicked satan out of heaven (Revelation 12:9), and satan was present in Eden (Genesis 3), there is some similarity between satan and the kings of Babylon and Tyre in the words of Isaiah and Ezekiel, but similarity is not the same as equality, and they are really three different entities.

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Lucifer.html

Samson: arch-hooligan par excellence

Reubens' interpretation of Samson killing the lion

There is only one Samson in the Bible. He was the only son of the Danite Manoah of Zorah, whose miraculous conception was foretold by an angel who appeared to her (Judges 13:3). The angel told her that her son would be a Nazirite who would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Judges 13:5).

Samson grew up in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol, but we know nothing of that time or when he began to display his proverbial powers. We also don't know what drove him to travel down to Philistine country (although the author states that YHWH enticed him to look for trouble — Judges 14:4), but there, in Timnah, he saw a woman he asked his parents to get for him (Judges 14:1). He and his parents travelled back to Timnah, and while on the road, he famously killed an attacking lion (Judges 14:6), and its carcass would later home a swarm of honey-producing bees (see for a surprising connection between Samson's bees and the Christmas story our Introduction to Scripture Theory).

The woman slipped through Samson's fingers due to trickery of her people, and Samson embarked on a series of wildly violent campaigns against the Philistines (which also resulted in the lynching of the woman and her father — Judges 15:6). As he took up residence in the cleft of the Rock of Etam, the Philistines retaliated by invading Judah. The men of Judah decided to hand Samson over to their enemies at Lehi, and Samson responded to that endeavor by picking up a donkey's jawbone and pummeling a thousand Philistines to death with it (Judges 15:15). To commemorate this event, he named the place Ramath-lehi and an adjacent spring he named En-hakkore.

At the end of his twenty year career as judge of Israel and Philistine-slayer, Samson took interest in a woman he saw in the Philistine stronghold of Gaza. The towns-folk of Gaza fixed to kill Samson, but in stead saw their town's gates getting hoisted up a mountain opposite Hebron (Judges 16:3). Still craving a woman, Samson went to the valley of Sorek and met Delilah.

Delilah was exceptionally gifted in the art of whining, and she drove Samson to the point of death (Judges 16:16). He finally told her that his Nazirite blessing might be compromised if his hair would be cut, which she promptly did (Judges 16:17). Powerless, Samson was delivered over to the Philistines, who blinded him and transported him to the prison in Gaza (Judges 16:21). When the Philistines brought Samson to the temple of their deity Dagon, the fallen judge prayed to the Lord, regained his strength and destroyed the temple, killing 3,000 Philistines and himself in the process (Judges 16:30).

The apostle Paul demonstrates that faith in the Lord does not always go hand in hand with elegance and subtlety when he lists Samson among the heroes of the faith (Samson in Greek is spelled Σαμψων, Sampson; Hebrews 11:32).

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Samson.html

The name Zaccheus

Only the gospel of Luke tells the familiar story of Zaccheus (Luke 19:2, 19:5 and 19:8). Zaccheus was a tax-collector of Jericho, who wanted to see Jesus but was forced to resort to climbing up a sycamore tree due to his small stature. When Jesus passed beneath the tree and saw Zaccheus, He told him to come down and invited Himself to Zaccheus' house.

The people who saw all this were disgruntled about Jesus associating with a man who collected the hated Roman taxes, but that was possibly because they benefitted from Zaccheus' operation. These Roman taxes proved later to be one of the major catalysts in provoking the Great Jewish Revolt, which culminated in the destruction of the temple of YHWH in Jerusalem (see our article on the name Annas for a discussion on these taxes and their Jewish collectors).

Zaccheus, however, exclaimed that he would give half of his possessions to the poor, and any excess he might have extorted, he would pay back fourfold. Upon hearing this, Jesus declared the man and his house saved and him a son of Abraham (Luke 19:9).

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Zaccheus.html

What's fishy about the name Philologus?

The name Philologus occurs only once in the Bible, namely at the end of Paul's letter to the Romans (Romans 16:15). Since Christianity was pretty much illegal in Rome, it's unlikely that Paul would mention the real and traceable names of his friends in the capital. It's therefore more likely that Paul used a kind of code, referring to historical figures or scenes from "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16) to get his final (and perhaps politically incorrect or even illegal) points across.

The name Philologus is rather unusual. The only one named such, as far as we know, was Andromachus Philologus, the husband of a 3rd century BC poet named Moero, from whom no work is extant. But the meaning of the name Philologus is so strikingly fitting the husband of a poet that one may be forgiven entertaining the possibility that our "name" is jocular.

The "name" Philologus is the same as the word philologus, which is quite a common term in classical literature, and literally means "fond of words" or "talkative". Plato had Socrates use it for himself, when the latter was enticed by his rhetoric sparring partner to speak on an unfamiliar topic, by swearing upon not some god but rather a tree that he would (Plato Phaedrus.236e; see Galatians 3:13). Other writers used it to express a fondness of philosophical argument, or of learning, and as such as synonym for student or eager pupil.

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Did God destroy the tower of Babel for punishment?

God is happy to see people unite and approach Him, but the Tower-builders were wrong about thinking that stacking stones (literally 'works') together would get them closer to heaven. Their goal was good, their effort folly.

God destroyed the effort and introduced variety of speech. Soon after, Abram was called and was promised blessing for all nations. Jesus became that which the Tower-builders were after: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." — John 12:32.

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The name Isaac means laughter

The root-verb צחק (sahaq) means to laugh, or rather: to have fun, in pretty much the same range of applications as in English (Genesis 39:14-17, Exodus 32:6, Judges 16:25).

Laughter makes us human and was the first formal result of the covenant God made with Abraham.

The first people to laugh in the Bible are Abraham (Genesis 17:17) and Sarah (Genesis 18:3, 21:6), but when Ishmael, the son of Abraham with Hagar also starts laughing, Sarah drives him and his mother out (Genesis 21:9). Sarah's son Isaac is named after the verb to laugh, and as he marries Rebekah, he appears to have ways to make her laugh as well. That their 'laughing' wasn't restricted to mere merriment is attested by the outcry of the local king Abimelech, "Behold, certainly, she is your wife!" (Genesis 26:8).

Laughter, like speech, is an acquired ability which developed in our past for reasons that have long been obscure. This obscurity in turn was due to the obvious fact that laughter is a continuation of the fear reflex — that's why it's so contagious, so hard to stop when you're at it and often so unclear whether someone is laughing or crying: it's basically the same sound produced by the same body parts.

In the last few decades, the study of natural synchronicity has made the connection clear. Humanity's incredible success in the world is not due to our intelligence, but much rather to our ability to tune into each other: synchronicity, or the mentally blending together at the reflex and subconscious level. Many closely monitored and double-blinded experiments have shown that humans (and particularly kin and romantic partners) have the ability to synchronize their heart beat, skin conductivity and even general mood. Women living together often menstruate at the same time.

In the natural world, one "naked ape" isn't much of a foe, but fifteen of them could be problematic, unless of course these fifteen don't want anything to do with each other. Should they, however, demonstrate a very high level of synchronicity, namely by exclaiming their alarm cry in utter synchronicity (perhaps even in multiple voices and snazzy rhythms, hence vocal music) any enemy with any sense at all will realize that the group is not simply fifteen times a naked ape, but rather one super-organism like a dragon with fifteen heads and a transparent body.

Human singing and laughing originated not in entertainment but in shows of force and are similar to an animal's standing upright, showing teeth or flapping brightly colored feathers. The name Abraham means Their Strength (or They Are Now Protected) and expresses international synchronicity. His son's name Isaac means Laughter.

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Nicodemus: a comic encounter

There's only one man named Nicodemus in the Bible but he plays quite a part. His name appears only in the gospel of John (a mere 5 times; see full concordance) and his literary character develops beautifully from scholarly and skeptic to justificatory and finally sympathetic, empathic if not outrageously exuberant.

The story of Nicodemus is deliberately comical

The gospel of John is one of the latest additions to the New Testament; it was written when the synoptic gospels had been circulating for decades and the letters of Paul even longer. Its perspective is clearly that from after the resurrection of Christ and its intended audience knew that the protagonist was going to end up alive and glorious.

The audience's assumed foreknowledge of the facts is clearly demonstrated by John's introduction of the story of the raising of Lazarus, in which he refers to Mary as the one who had anointed Jesus (John 11:2). He's not referring to something he's already told. John's own version of that account would follow in chapter 12.

John is not trying to add more facts but organize the existing facts in a new way, quite possibly also to address the follies of Gnosticism, which slowly began to distinguish itself as an independent philosophy around the time of John's writing. The early Gnostics began to believe that salvation was the result of a certain true knowledge and that this true knowledge could be achieved by a life of study and ascetic self-denial. Christianity differs from Gnosticism in its belief that salvation comes from Christ, whose love surpasses all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). Knowledge is of course highly appreciated in the Bible, but ultimately it's not knowledge but He who makes us able to stand blamelessly in the presence of God, and He gives great joy (Jude 1:24, Jude is also a relatively late book). Or said popularly: if true knowledge was the key, the devil would be in.

John's gospel is deliberately joyful; it even ends with a quip (John 21:25; also see John 20:30-31). John is probably too early to be an actual formal response to Gnosticism, but it deliberately shows the inadequacy of the intellectual effort and does that in the form of satire and downright banter. Commentators rarely touch the comic character of the debate between Nicodemus and Jesus, but while Nicodemus is obviously displayed as a stern academic and a very learned man, Jesus treats him like a banana.

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The noun πετρα (petra) means rock but Peter means pebble

The feminine noun πετρα (petra) means rock or rather: mountain of a rock. A petra is used to build houses in and on (Matthew 7:24, Luke 6:48) or hew sepulchers in (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:46). It's also used to metaphorize someone's firmness or strength; the Septuagint uses it in 2 Samuel 22:2 in the familiar phrase "The Lord is my petra and my fortress." Paul refers to the Meribah event in 1 Corinthians 10:4, and compares Christ to the petra from which the waters flowed (Exodus 17:6).

Petra denotes a firm foundation and as such it serves as a metaphor for faith in Jesus Christ (see our article on the word πιστις, pistis, meaning faith, for more on this).

The masculine counterpart of petra is πετρος (petros), which denotes a wobbly flint that won't supply any footing and can be tossed away at will.

Not on some innately strong rock but on these small pebbles will I build my church  ...

All this indicates that the Peter (petros) upon which Jesus would build his church was not one of strength but of ostentatious weakness and collectivity.

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Could Pilate have been a good guy?

There is only one man named Pilatos mentioned in the Bible (or all of recorded history, for that matter) and that is Pontius Pilate, the infamous Roman governor of Judea at the time of the public life of Christ. His name occurs 55 times in the New Testament (see full concordance) but as simple as the literary character of Pilate tends to be summarized — to most and even serious commentators, Pilate was little more than the quintessential bad guy who let the Jews let the Romans kill Jesus — it's really phenomenally complex, and that in more ways than one. In fact, Pilate my actually have been one of the good guys.

When Pilate called out "See the man!" he didn't express evil disdain but concern and confusion. 

To start with, governors of the forty-plus provinces of Rome remained in office one to three years while Pilate stayed on for a decade. That had to have a reason. The tasks of these local governors were so mundane — basically maintaining a region's financial revenues and directing these to Rome — that the names of only very few of them are known to us today. That means that the literary coverage that Pilate enjoyed, by several non-Biblical first century authors, is no less than phenomenal (for more on Josephus, see our article on Dalmanutha). Also indubitably for a good reason.

Nearly sixty years after the event allegedly took place, the famous historian Josephus felt compelled to submit that Pilate had been reprieved and sent to Rome by the governor of Syria, to explain to the emperor his brutal suppression of a Samaritan uprising. For reasons we'll discuss below, this is so obviously a lie that we can only conclude that Josephus engineered a slanderous ruse about someone who should have been considered a minor player more than half a century earlier. Clearly, Pilate had not been a mere minor player and his influence was still felt in the 90's AD.

Secondly, traditional history has always told the story of the ages by stringing the stories of its superstars together. Nowadays, however, we realize that the influence of superstars on the course of human history is only minute, and the real story is told by what buzzes the common populace. Julius Caesar, arguably one of the most super of superstars and father of Roman imperialism — the familiar Christian phrase "Son of God" was originally applied to Augustus; Julius being the implied paternal deity — was besides a general and statesman a prolific writer who wrote about pretty much everything, sometimes in critically acclaimed poetry. But the bulk of Caesar's work — the "Word of God", so to speak — has been lost!

For some reason, the nameless scribes and scholars of the ancient world preserved for us scores of poems by Solomon and David, who were minor kings (politically speaking), but couldn't be bothered to preserve the musings of the Father of the Modern World. These same scribes, however, began to copy the gospels and letters of Paul on such an industrial scale that we have countless different versions (due to minor copy errors and editorials) that date back to mere years after their original inception.

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Who was the mysterious Zacharias of Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:51?

Both Matthew and Luke report of a fire-and-brimstone sermon by Jesus, in which he pronounces the Pharisees' guilt of all shed righteous blood on earth, from that of righteous Abel to that of Zacharias son of Barachias, who "they" murdered between the temple and the altar (Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:51). We know who Abel was but the fellow named Zacharias is harder to place.

The father of the prophet Zechariah was called Berechiah (Zechariah 1:1), so that seems like a good bet, but this Zechariah worked about 500 years before Jesus blamed the Pharisees for all the innocent blood shed on earth. That would mean that Jesus figured that no innocent blood had been shed for the previous five centuries, which would be quite a statement. And Zechariah was never reported murdered, as far as we know. Of course, a lot of things happened in those days that we don't know about but one would assume that Jesus wouldn't refer to an event that was so relatively obscure that not a single other report of it survives.

A Zechariah whose murder does appear in the Scriptures is a prophet in the early days of the divided kingdom, who protested the people's worship of idols and was stoned to death in the court of the temple of YHWH and by command of king Joash (2 Chronicles 24:21). The name is right and the place is right (the inner or priestly court of the temple contained the altar, so Zechariah could have been perfectly positioned between the altar and the actual sanctuary), but this story plays in the ninth century BC (that's more than eight centuries without innocent blood shed), and this Zechariah's father wasn't called Berechiah but Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 24:20).

Proponents of this theory argue that many people in the Old Testament have two names that are used interchangeably, but why would Jesus refer to someone we all know, and all know to be a son of Jehoiada, confusingly as a son of Berechiah, as if he were the later prophet Zechariah?

Others claim that the innocent Zacharias was in fact the father of John the Baptist, but that would require assuming that his father was called Barachias and that he was killed in the temple court, and no one else talked about that. But, really, if we would allow assumptions like that we might as well assume that righteous Zacharias himself isn't otherwise known.

Much more radical is a connection between our mystery man and a story told by the famous Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (see our article on Dalmanutha), about a wealthy man named Zacharias, son of Baruch, who was murdered "in the middle of the temple" by riotous Zealots who had first organized a mock trial presided over by seventy judges, and who had swiftly acquitted Zacharias, much to the chagrin of the zealots (Jewish Wars, IV, 5, 4). The names Baruch and Berechiah are closely related (one is short for the other, and this kind of truncation is very common in the Bible; the famous Baruch-bulla that surfaced in 1975 even reads "Belonging to Berechiah, son-of-Neriah, the scribe") and there is no huge time gap between this murder and the time of Jesus. The only problem with this theory is that the murder of Zacharias by the zealots happened in the year 67 AD.

Scholars are generally not happy with this connection. "It's doubtful whether this [interpretation] can be justified," writes Spiros Zodhiates (The Complete Wordstudy Dictionary — New Testament) mildly. "That Jesus should predict the incident is absurd," roars John Macpherson (Zacharias: a study of Matthew 23:35).

In footnote IV-9 on his translation of the Jewish Wars, William Whiston makes the obvious objection that the murder of Zacharias by the zealots was decades in the future of Jesus. And he suggests that Josephus cared enough about the sanctity of the temple that he would have certainly mentioned if the zealots had murdered acquitted Zacharias in the inner court.

Here at Abarim Publications we're not so sure.

Josephus paints a clear picture of complete anarchy. It seems that there were hundreds of people gathered in the temple complex that day; spectators, seventy judges and enough zealots to dominate everybody. After the mock trial, the zealots murder Zacharias (yelling something like, "Here's our acquittal! See how that one suits you!") and pummel the seventy judges out of the temple complex with the backs of their swords, so that they could demonstrate to the citizens that they were nothing but slaves to the zealots. Josephus shows obvious indignation to the zealots' general disrespect. As Josephus notes about the Zealots a few paragraphs further up:

"These men, therefore, trampled upon all the laws of men, and laughed at the laws of God; and for the oracles of the prophets, they ridiculed them as the tricks of jugglers. Yet did these prophets foretell many things concerning [the rewards of] virtue, and [punishments of] vice, which when these zealots violated, they occasioned the fulfilling of those very prophecies belonging to their own country; for there was a certain ancient oracle of those men, that the city should then be taken and the sanctuary burnt, by right of war, when a sedition should invade the Jews, and their own hand should pollute the temple of God. Now while these zealots did not [quite] disbelieve these predictions, they made themselves the instruments of their accomplishment" (Josephus — Jewish Wars IV.6.3).

The problem of chronology is evenly easily solved. The reference to Abel and Zacharias was not made by Jesus but by the narrator of the story (whoever that was, Matthew, Luke or the Q-author, or even a later editor). It's an insert, a gloss, comparable to the "let the reader understand" inserts of Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14, and aimed at the audience of the gospels who certainly knew very well about the murder of Zacharias and when it had happened, namely very recently.

Saying that Matthew and Luke referred to a fifth or ninth century martyr is like supposing that when a late 20th century author speaks of "the Kennedy assassination," he is talking about poor lord David Kennedy who was killed at Flodden in 1513. If the evangelists hadn't meant the obvious Zacharias, they would have had to add "Zacharias, not the famous one!"

Poor David Kennedy, who met his untimely demise at the Battle of Flodden in 1513

The murder of Zacharias marked the end of an era. It was an early symptom of the imminent destruction of the temple and the collapse of Jerusalem, and that collapse marked the end of Jewish reality, in effect the end of the world. The murders of Abel and Zacharias encompassed the whole of history, exactly the stretch of time that Jesus speaks about, but the Abel and Zacharias remark was never intended to be placed in the mouth of Jesus; it's a comment obviously made by the story teller. Red-letter Bibles should stop printing red after the word "earth" and pick it up again after the word "altar".

There are two towns named Bethlehem mentioned in the Bible

There are two towns named Bethlehem mentioned in the Bible; the famous one in Judah, the other one in Zebulun (Joshua 19:15). Bethlehem-Judah is first mentioned as the place formerly known as Ephrath (Genesis 35:16), where Rachel gives birth to Benjamin and dies (Genesis 35:19).

Bethlehem's rise to stardom is set in motion by Elimelech the Bethlehemite (בית הלחמי, note that this frequently occurring ethnonym is spelled with a maqqep, or hyphen, only in 1 Samuel 16:1, but always comes with the particle of motion ה, he) who finds himself and his family driven out of Israel and to Moab by a famine (Ruth 1:1-2). His wife's name is Naomi, his sons are Mahlon and Chilion, and his Moabite daughters in law are Ruth and Orpah. When after ten years all the men are dead, Orpah goes home and Naomi goes back to Bethlehem and takes Ruth with her. In Bethlehem Ruth meets and marries Boaz. Their son is Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David who would be the king who united the tribes of Israel. It is for this reason that Micah writes his Messianic prophecy referred to in Matthew 2:6:

"But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity (Micah 5:2)".

Perhaps he should have left it a surprise because some 700 years later king Herod, fearing rivalry from an infant, has all the children of Bethlehem (Βηθλεεμ, Bethleem) and environs murdered. Matthew reveals how far those environs stretch by referring to what Jeremiah wrote, 100 years after Micah, "Thus says YHWH, 'a voice is heard in Ramah, [...] Rachel is weeping for her children...'" (Matthew 2:18, Jeremiah 31:15).

Rachel's tomb is somewhere on the border of Benjamin (1 Samuel 10:2) and Ramah is a Benjamin town north of Jerusalem.

In 1 Chronicles 2:51 it reads that Salma was the father of Bethlehem, and it seems that this Bethlehem is a person. However, this Bethlehem is mentioned along groups of people and towns, and it is much more likely that Salma was a mayor (the אב, ab) of the town of Bethlehem-Judah. Something similar happens with Tekoa in 1 Chronicles 2:24. In 2 Chronicles 11:6 we see both these towns as "built" by Rehoboam. That means either that these existing towns were fortified, or Rehoboam erected new forts with old, nostalgic names. (Compare with 2 Chronicles 8:2, where Solomon 'builds' cities that were given to him by Huram).

The name Bethlehem is written without the maqqep in Genesis and Judges and on, but sporadically in Samuel, Chronicles and the Prophets it occurs spelled with a maqqep (בית־לחם). It occurs a mere 8 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.

For the "true meaning of Christmas," read our article on the name Nazareth and the paragraph on the Titulus Crucis in our article on the name Mary. Here at Abarim Publications we're pretty sure that although the Word became embodied in Bethlehem, the gospel that told of this originated with the Jews of the Diaspora in Persian Babylon.

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There are not one but five Jesuses mentioned in the New Testament

There are no fewer than five separate individuals named Jesus in the Bible, which is not such a wonder since Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua.

The most famous Jesus, of course, is Jesus the Nazarene, also known as Jesus Christ or the Messiah; the semi-biological son of Mary, son-by-law of Joseph and monogenes Son of God. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, lived as an infant in Egypt, and in Nazareth until He was thirty years old. In the early days of His ministry he moved to Capernaum, and at the end of it He was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, tried by Pontius Pilate and executed at Golgotha. Three days later He resurrected and forty days after that He ascended to heaven.

The famous Jesus is one of five men named Jesus mentioned in the New Testament

Other men named Jesus in the New Testament are:

• An ancestor of Jesus in the Lucan genealogy (Luke 3:29), and only according to some translations. In Greek this name is spelled Ιωση (Jose), which only the King James and Young translations properly transliterate. The Darby translation speaks of Joses. The New International Version and New American Standard translations have Joshua. And the American Standard Version has Jesus.
• Joshua (Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8).
• A fellow worker of Paul named Jesus Justus (Colossians 4:11).
• A Jewish magician who Paul and Barnabas meet on Cyprus, named Bar-Jesus (a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic for Son Of Joshua).

The name Jesus was obviously quite common in New Testament times. The Roman-Jewish historian Josephus mentions at least twenty different people named Jesus in his works, one of these being Jesus son of Damneus, who became high priest when the previous high priest was deposed for executing James the Just, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth (Ant.20.9). Another Jesus Josephus wrote about was Jesus son of Ananias, who in 62 AD began walking about Jerusalem, loudly foretelling its destruction by the Romans in 70 AD .

All together, the name Jesus occurs 972 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.

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The Stoics in the New Testament

 Zeno of Citium - a cheerful chap

The Stoics are mentioned once in the Bible, namely in Acts 17:18, where they and their Epicurean counterparts engage Paul's discussion on Jesus Christ and the resurrection. They were followers of the philosopher Zeno of Citium (336 - 264 BC), and Citium was a city-kingdom on the southern coast of Cyprus, which was either Phoenician or still so much influenced by them that Zeno's Cynic mentor Crates called his pupil "little Phoenician" (Diogenes Laertius, vii.3).

Although the Stoics and Epicureans were proverbially Greek, these competing schools of thought showed remarkable similarities between the proverbial Jewish schools of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Neither the Epicureans nor the Sadducees believed in angels or spirits and such, but both the Pharisees and Stoics did (Acts 23:8) and since Paul came from the Pharisee tradition (Acts 23:6, Philippians 3:5), he probably got along wonderfully with the Stoics.

Paul was from Tarsus, which was also the home of a major center of Stoicism, and since Paul's writing is riddled with respectful references to Greek and Roman writings (see our article on Homer) and Stoicism was the major school of Greek thought in Paul's days, it's beyond reasonable doubt that he was intimately acquainted with Stoicism. In fact, even though Paul's writings were later physically bundled with Jewish ones to form the Bible, it's impossible to tell whether Paul's theology was a continuation of Judaic or Stoic thought.

Paul drew freely from any source that might explain the gospel, and that, to some extent, is the gospel. Or as Paul himself said: "I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).

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