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The wind of the Holy Spirit lifts tongues of fire at Pentecost: "Are These Not All Galileans?"
The WORD became flesh and encamped among us (ἐσκήνωσεν = encamped)
We have seen His glory
Glory as only begotten with Father* (δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός) y-y*
Full of grace and truth
---JOHN (1:14)1
(The key Greek word in the above passage is the adjective monogenous (μονογενοῦς), pronounced: mon-og-en-ooce'. The word combines two root words: mono, which means "one," and genous (the genitive form of genos), which means: 1) offspring or descendant, 2) family or clan, 3) race or nation, 4) gender*, 5) type or class. These concepts are all rooted in generation, genesis, birth, conception. The word monogenous was often used to denote a sole offspring, but did at times also refer to an issue who was unique or paradigm. The opportunities for literary device expand with the nuances of "one" to indicate either the lone individual, or the unity of a group.)2
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Double-edged acts of word-play about supermen are afoot. In JOHN (1:14), the Greek word ἐσκήνωσεν literally means "to pitch a tent." Once a reference to Bedouins has been excluded, tent-pitching inevitably connotes warfare in the Roman period. Hence those who seek the truth can hear, how the forces of the WORD OF GOD encamped among the people. The wording chosen by the text, alludes to the Galilean army, which fleshed-out the WORD---making it manifest. At yet another great turning point in earth history, the host of Galilee provided Yahweh with His tabernacle in the desolation.
Those who call themselves "Biblical Literalists," are inheritors of a tradition programmed to reject the God who sponsors the greatest work of historical literature, while they embrace a filicide cult deity in His place. The so called literalists are thereby rendered incapable of comprehending the volcanic certitude with which God's literary "Peace" will erupt. They have no ears to hear the Gospel's subtle memorials to the virile Galilean army---crucified as was Jesus. The tightest of these literary memorials, rotate upon the sword.
SWORD-FIGHT AT BATHHOUSE JUDAH
The Galileans led a successful revolt against Nero's Rome. Josephus was chosen as the general who would command the novel defense against the return of Roman power. Whereas Josephus was Hasmonean by descent, his fore-bearers had led the successful Maccabean revolt against the abominable Pagan tyranny of Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes. Josephus begins his account of the Jewish-Roman War---his book WARS---rather boldly, with a geothermal account of the 166 BC, Hasmonean victory at Emmaus which freed Israel from the Seleucids. This brief thread of introduction will sing out about only a few sizzling verses, to massage what the Pharisees mistook for a profanation of holy things, such as the Temple, and the Sabbath.
The rub down starts with: (1) Joe's Subtle Emmaus Forward to WARS, where Maccabee's 166 BC redemption of Israel at Emmaus, frames Joe's report on the First Jewish-Roman War which commenced in full 232 years later (in 66 AD). The discussion will knead out the knots which tie the second verse of that politically nostalgic prologue to: (2) When Pigs Fly in the Gospel, where the issue of what constitutes what is clean or unclean, receives its ultimate satirical treatment in the edgy Gospel pericope of Legion's exorcism from Israel. Then, after looping back around to pound out the bottom ends of the Emmaus Forward to WARS, the pointers will rush back naked into: (3) Joe's parallel account of Maccabee's Emmaus Battle in ANTIQUITIES. The session promises a happy ending with: (4) the Resurrection Appearance on the Road to Emmaus in LUKE, which runs the tags down into both: (5) the Testimonium Flavianum and: (6) the Creed of the Galilean Sect's Zealotry in ANTIQUITIES. So without further delay, the track of this thread commences with the first feet in the temperamental heat animated by Judah Maccabee's great achievement of victory, won over Antiochus Epiphanes in the Battle of Emmaus. Therefrom Judah Maccabee lustily runs the 160 stadia dash, from Emmaus to Jerusalem, where Maccabee hammers the very real Seleucid sacrilege on the Temple mount to redeem Israel. Hasmonean Josephus uses this pericope of Maccabean victory at Emmaus, to frame the politics of the Galilean revolt against both Rome and Rome's hired sheepherders:
JOE'S SUBTLE EMMAUS FORWARD TO WARS
ἀπὸ δὲ θερμοῦ τοῦ κατορθώματος
ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ πόλει φρουράν
οὔπω γὰρ ἐκκέκοπτο
καὶ ἐκβαλὼν ἀπὸ τῆς ἄνω πόλεως
συνωθεῖ τοὺς στρατιώτας εἰς τὴν κάτω· ...
From the heat of this great achievement (i.e. from the excitement on Judah Maccabee's victory at Emmaus)
("heat" is θερμοῦ --- thermoῦ, Greek root of the English word "thermal," cf. thermoῦ balaneion: "thermal bath." Josephus primes his audience with his Emmaus word-game, whereas the name of the battle location is specified as "Emmaus" in ANTIQUITIES (12:7:4), but is here only referred to with this hot word-play on the thermal definition Josephus gives for the name "Emmathaus" in Galilee at WARS 4:1:3.)
He rushed upon the garrison in the city (Maccabee raced to Jerusalem to destroy the now unsupported occupation)
For they had not yet been cut off (hmmm...)
So he blew them back out of the upper town Pushing upon the soldiers in the bottom ---WARS (1:1:4) This Emmaus victory song lilts on to finish off the Seleucid stinkers in the Holy Place. Liberation of the Jerusalem Temple rushes on the heels of this extract, to top off Joe's bold Emmaus forward to WARS, and mark how his work is surreptitiously girded with the theme of human slavery and liberation, national captivity and redemption. Joe tags his ornately constructed codex with this Greek word "rushed" (ὥρμησεν --- hōrmēsen), to run the aim and itinerary of the Galilean redeemer inside the Messianic program initiated by the redeemers of Joe's own Maccabean ancestry: ☛ WHEN PIGS FLY FROM LEGION IN MATTHEW ☚ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ὑπάγετε οἱ δὲ ἐξελθόντες ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὴν ἀγέλην τῶν χοίρων· καὶ ἰδού, ὥρμησεν πᾶσα ἡ ἀγέλη τῶν χοίρων κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ ἀπέθανον ἐν τοῖς ὕδασιν And He said to them: "Go down!" Then having gone out, they entered into the pigs And behold: rushed the whole herd down the precipice into the sea And died-off in the waters ---MATTHEW (8:32) ❃❃❃❃❃ ☛ WHEN PIGS FLY FROM LEGION IN LUKE ☚ ἐξελθόντα δὲ τὰ δαιμόνια ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους καὶ ὥρμησεν ἡ ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν λίμνην καὶ ἀπεπνίγη Then having gone out from the man, the demons entered into the pigs And rushed the herd down the precipice into the lake
And were choked-off
---LUKE (8:33)
❃❃❃❃❃ ☛ WHEN PIGS FLY FROM LEGION IN MARK ☚
καὶ ἐξελθόντα τὰ πνεύματα τὰ ἀκάθαρτα εἰσῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους
καὶ ὥρμησεν ἡ ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ὡς δισχίλιοι
καὶ ἐπνίγοντο ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ
And having gone out, the unclean spirits entered into the pigs
And rushed the herd down the precipice into the sea about two-thousand*
And they were choked in the sea
---MARK (5:13)
*("about 2000": not the countable sum of "153" which an implicit dot-connection will contrast)
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STONE-CUTTING LEGION GOES WILD IN MARK Καὶ ἦλθον εἰς τὸ πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης εἰς τὴν χώραν τῶν Γερασηνῶν (Γαδαρηνῶν -/- Γεργεσηνῶν). καὶ ἐξελθόντος αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ πλοίου, εὐθὺς ὑπήντησεν αὐτῷ ἐκ τῶν μνημείων ἄνθρωπος ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ, ὃς τὴν κατοίκησιν εἶχεν ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν, καὶ οὐδὲ ἁλύσει οὐκέτι οὐδεὶς ἐδύνατο αὐτὸν δῆσαι. διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν πολλάκις πέδαις καὶ ἁλύσεσιν δεδέσθαι, καὶ διεσπάσθαι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὰς ἁλύσεις καὶ τὰς πέδας συντετρῖφθαι, καὶ οὐδεὶς ἴσχυεν αὐτὸν δαμάσαι· καὶ διὰ παντὸς νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν ἦν κράζων καὶ κατακόπτων ἑαυτὸν λίθοις ... ἔλεγεν γὰρ αὐτῷ Ἔξελθε τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἀκάθαρτον ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. καὶ ἐπηρώτα αὐτόν Τί σοι ὄνομά καὶ ἀπεκρίθη λέγων, Λεγεὼν ὄνομά μοι ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν. καὶ παρεκάλει αὐτὸν πολλὰ ἵνα μὴ αὐτοὺς ἀποστείλῃ ἔξω τῆς χώρας. Ἦν δὲ ἐκεῖ πρὸς τὰ ὄρη ἀγέλη χοίρων μεγάλη βοσκομένη·. καὶ παρεκάλεσαν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ δαίμονες λέγοντες Πέμψον ἡμᾶς εἰς τοὺς χοίρους ἵνα εἰς αὐτοὺς εἰσέλθωμεν. καὶ ἐπέτρεψεν αὐτοῖς εὐθέως ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐξελθόντα τὰ πνεύματα τὰ ἀκάθαρτα εἰσῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους καὶ ὥρμησεν ἡ ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἦσαν δὲ ὡς δισχίλιοι καὶ ἐπνίγοντο ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ. --- MARK (5:1-13)And they went to the other side of the sea to the region of the Gerasenes (variants read Gadarenes -/- Gergesenes). And upon his having gone forth out of the boat, he immediately met up with a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling in the tombs, and no longer was anyone even able to bind him, not even with a chain. Whereas he often had been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn in two by him, and the shackles had been shattered, and no one was able to subdue him. And constantly all night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains he was crying and cutting himself with stones ... [Jesus] was saying to him; "Come forth uncleansed spirit from out of the man!" And He (Jesus) asked him (the daemon): "What is your name?" And he answered saying: "Legion! (Λεγεὼν) For we are many!" (πολλοί --- polloi)! And he begged Him many times that He would not send them out of the country (χώρα --- chóra, pronounced kho'-rah). For there, feeding near the mountain, was a herd of pigs (χοῖρος --- choiros, pronounced khoy'-ros, hence there's a pun here, between χώρα "country": kho'-rah, and the singular χοίρου "pig": khoy-roo; this pun is later exploited further, when in LUKE 8:37, all the περι-χώρου "surrounding country": --- peri-chōrou, pronounced per-ikh'-o-roo, begs Jesus to "depart": ἀπελθεῖν --- apelthein (cf. 'go out': ἐξελθεῖν --- exelthein) i.e. 'go-out' from the "surrounding country," which is given alternately as ὅριον --- horion, pronounced hor'-ee-on, in MARK 5:17 and MATTHEW 8:34). And they begged Him saying: "Send us into those pigs, that we may enter into them!" And He allowed them. And having gone out (ἐξελθόντα --- exelthonta), the unclean spirits entered into the pigs. And rushed (ὥρμησεν --- Joe's tag to the Emmaus forward to WARS, unmolested by all three Legionarie pericopes in the Gospel) the herd down the precipice (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ --- Joe's tag to the Arbela Cave pericope, a phrase also unmolested in all three Legionnaire pericopes) into the sea about two-thousand. And they were choked in the sea.
❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀ ❀❀❀❀❀❀  ABOVE: GEOLOGICAL FORTRESS: This is only the western third of the massive northern cave face of Mount Arbel, Sea of Galilee in the background. The Hasmonean rulers built up Magdala along the edge of this natural edifice, where it falls into the sea below the peak to the bottom left of this picture.  ABOVE: TWO STORIES TO THE RUINED CAVE COMPLEXES ON THE PRECIPITOUS FACE OF MOUNT ARBEL. The cave structures were both carved back deep into the rock and defensively walled in flat to the ledges. They were supplied by huge cisterns filled by water channels carved down in the stone. Many of the interiors were finely paved and finished. BELOW: ANOTHER VIEW OF THE HUMONGOUS MOUNT ARBEL CLIFF FORTRESS: Magdala on the Plain of Gennesareth in the background.  ❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀ THE TOWER OF MARIAMNE AND THE SPEAR OF DESTINY
♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨  ABOVE: FAR LEFT AND FAR RIGHT FRAMES: COIN OF KING ANTIGONUS MATTATHIAS---LAST HASMONEAN HIGH PRIEST TO HOLD REGAL POWER: This coin of Mattathias is the only ancient Jewish coin to depict the Temple implements of Menorah and Showbread Table. The graphic of this coin represents the first die of more than twelve known dies of this issue, yet a total of only twenty-five specimens, from all the known dies combined, have surfaced until now. Rather than tender, this issue was plausibly a token exchangeable for arms at those smelters in the nation which opposed Herod and the Roman Legions coming to oust Mattathias and his Parthian sponsors. This bronze was forged at the same historical moment when Josephus so dramatically illustrates an angry old man throwing his own issue "down the precipice" of the cave complex at Arbel---fortress over Magdala. The Greek inscription around the Menorah reads: "King Antigonus." The Paleo-Hebrew inscription around the Showbread Table reads: "Mattatayah High Priest and Council of the Jews." CENTER FRAME: DIAGRAM OF A STONE CARVED IN RELIEF, FOUND IN A FIRST CENTURY B.C. SYNAGOGUE EXCAVATED AT MAGDALA: The Synagogue at Magdala is the most lavish of the half dozen known Synagogues which date from the Second Temple Period. The edifice was decorated with frescoes of the First Pompeiian Style, painted stone columns, carved stone pilasters, and a mosaic with evident royal symbology. Dating from 100 BC to 67 AD, this congregation of the local Jewish Council was built in the most defensible corner of the city, behind a thick seawall, against the steep slopes and narrow pass around Mount Arbel. Found in situ, against a long wall in a narrow room, and facing stone benches along the opposite wall, this carved stone almost certainly served as the base to a huge metal or wooden stand which held a very impressive scroll of the Torah. Here the WORD OF GOD stood upright in Magdala. The adjacent space which has been called "the reading room" of the Synagogue, was likely a scriptorium involved with both religious and temporal business. Like all the decorum in the Synagogue, no animals are depicted, though some geometric designs on the top of this stone base do seem to deliberately suggest (but not illegally depict) fish tails. Note how the seven branched Temple Menorah is represented flanked by columns. These represent the Temple's facade, whose idealization was once Solomon's Temple pillars called Boaz and Jachin, connecting the earth to the heavens. Some have hastily assumed that the stone jars shown beside this Menorah are amphorae of wine. This reasoning is no doubt partly attributable to shallow reads of certain prutah's from the Great Revolt which depict grape leaves on one side, then amphorae on the other. While the Holy intoxication implied, in the context of a sovereignty secured by bloody resistance, should indeed be interpreted as deliberate (and while there was indeed a great excess of good wine stored up in the Temple complex to aid in the attraction of strong unlettered youth towards the showdown), the jars on this Magdala Torah-stand base, (and even the amphorae on the Great Revolt coins in question), are better understood as jars stocked full of oil for the Temple Menorah. This reasoning discovers a Hasmonean connection which involves the Maccabean Hanukkah story. For whereas the Temple was indeed a stealth fortress, the gathering of siege stores for this fortress was the aim of representations of these oil jars (note the tank of oil in the base below the Magdala Menorah, which has its symbolic corollary in a diamond which surrounds the royal rosette in the Magdala Synagogue's mosaic floor). The provenance of the relevant phase of great civic works at Magdala, and hence the charter of this Magdala Synagogue/Concil of the Jews, is Hasmonean. The long, war-filled reign of Alexander Jannaeus was most important in the establishment of this community. A consensus is building that most or all depictions of the Menorah which date from the Second Temple Period are probably of priestly provenance. Whereas the Hasmonean King was High Priest, the priestly connections in his dominion's newest outposts like Magdala, were undoubtedly of Hasmonean affiliation. Thus when Magdala is mentioned in the lists of priestly abodes composed after the Temple's destruction, this can not be taken to preclude a colony of Temple priests in Magdala while the Temple still functioned. Moreover, this same reasoning should be extended to Nazareth, which also appears on these lists. For Josephus points this way with the priestly connection he riddles into Mary through Elizabeth and Zechariah. Consider that when Varus razed Sepphoris to the ground and enslaved its inhabitants, the priestly colony which the Hasmoneans planted at Sepphoris would naturally have wanted to retain control of the adjacent pastures and fields allotted to them. While Antipas, using Roman law, might have gotten away with appropriating whatever property this priestly clan the Hasmoneans planted in Sepphoris had previously held inside the now destroyed city (a city repopulated by Herodians and foreigners which the Hasmonean sponsored priests were likely not interested in joining anyway), Antipas would have had a much harder time evicting the entire clan of these Temple priests from any nearby holdings, no matter what innuendo might have connected any individuals among them to the 4 BC revolt which ensued when Great Herod died. The Roman/Herodian consumption of the Hasmonean state and its institutions, while steady and progressive, was paced for least resistance. Nevertheless it would explode like a tinderbox, despite the attempt at finesse. Fire Marshall Joe was master of the matches, when the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord arrived.♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨
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 ABOVE: HIGHLIGHTED GRAPHIC RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROYAL SEAL OF KING ALEXANDER JANNAEUS, BASED UPON AN BULLA IMPRESSION WHICH SURFACED FROM THE ISRAELI ANTIQUITIES MARKET IN 1975: The seal gives the king's theophoric Hebrew name Jonathan (Yehu-Nathan) which means "Yahweh's-Gift." The name Nathaniel is a parallel Elohist synonym, with the more generic meaning: "God's-Gift." This seal is the earliest known use of a date-palm as a symbol of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew calligraphy, reconstructed within the constrained space, depicts the letters given by the 1981 analytical report of N. Avigad. Use of Paleo-Hebrew script on Hasmonean seals, and especially on their coinage, is somewhat mysterious, whereas that script had long fallen out of general use. By 500 BC, Aramaic square letters were employed for even the scrolls of Holy Scripture, with the one exception of the instances where the divine name Yahweh ("YHWH") occurs in the texts. Thus God's name was still written in Paleo-Hebrew, although the rest of the Torah was otherwise penned in the more intelligible Aramaic square script. Somehow this reverent retention of Paleo-Hebrew for the name Yahweh would, in time, contribute to a terrible capital innovation. Consider therefore how this seal of Jannaeus, with its provocative yet ineluctable division of Jannaeus's theophoric name into its two roots, along with the greater size of the title "King" (M-L-K)---with all that root's highly negative narrative possibilities---fit with Jannaeus's disregard for Pharisaic halachic sensibilities. His worst detractors were these enforcers of a corrupted, so-called literalist interpretation of the WORD. Their obfuscationist paradigm whittled-down the WORD and Yahweh into skin deep caricatures. This self-anointed religious police-force micromanaged all contracts and Sabbath observances until Israel's God was so inaccessible to the people that His name could not be spoken. Such rigid and reactionary innovation, which rose in force over time in relation to the adoption of Aramaic and the challenge of Hellenism, had, in effect, become much more idolatrous than the less superstitious belief system of Jannaeus and his Hellenized, (moreover quite literate and geopolitically wise), Judean milieu. Ironically, the ruler's xenophobic Pharisaic detractors were not capable of fully comprehending how Rome was the Molech on the horizon against whom Jannaeus was racing to prepare the nation and its legacy for an inevitable showdown---in full compliance with a truer, and unassailably more circumspect, weighing of the WORD. Hence the double-edged wit of the King of the Jews fell on many ears irate in their intransigent tone deafness. The palm trunk on the seal of Jannaeus, exhibits a deliberate likeness for the war club of a Samsonic Hercules, discussed with further illustrations below. For a deliberate contrast, the artistic flourishes of the color highlight in this reconstruction have actually obscured the round, un-palm-like knotting, evident on the original design, as seen on the parallel seal in the following illustration. The reconstruction of the seal is here framed by points to some of the puzzles alluding to Jannaeus in the Gospel. Key to hearing these, is the knowledge, that since at least the time of Jannaeus, through the time of Jesus, and on into the Great Revolt, it was the Hasmonean "princes" or "rulers" (שָׂר sar: root S-R) who were the genitive possessors of the gardens identified by the geographical moniker Genosar (גניסר G-N-S-R: "Gardens of the Rulers," the name of the fertile plain which lays between Capernaum and Magdala). In WARS Josephus transliterates this into Greek Γεννησὰρ (Gennesar), in the Gospels Γεννησαρέτ (Gennesaret). The doubled n, not present in the original Hebrew pun גניסר, nor its source כנרות (LXX Κενερὲθ), neatly affords the wordplay's amble on into the Gospel variants to the name of a high place on the southwest approach to Sepphoris called both Nazara Ναζαρά, and Nazareth Ναζαρέτ, Ναζαρὲθ. This ornate phonic hook which morphs Gennesareth with Nazareth, baits the seeker further with Joe's fabulous branch of the Nile at Gennesar, a fantastic anomaly he conjectures due to a local Nile-Fish, with which he ciphers the Priestly course of Hapizzez resident at Nazareth, via a suggested bilingual Egyptian/Latin pun: Hapi-Pisces. All this prompts the students of the arch-scholiast to nibble, all the more gingerly, on the line of God's-gift which lures the ego on with the faux-slam: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The Hasmonean prince become ruler---King Jannaeus---did indeed come out of Galilee. Connect the dots: from Jannaeus's youth and education spent in Galilee due to his dishonor in the family (ANTIQUITIES 13:12:1), to the dishonor of Jesus at Nazareth (MARK 6:4, LUKE 4:16-30, on into king Jannai's own dishonor in his hometown---Jerusalem (ANTIQUITIES 13:13:5). This braiding is validated by Jannaeus's inclusion as Jesus's ancestor Ἰανναὶ Jannai at LUKE (3:23-25), the proof for which is detailed in the next seal illustration's caption. The Messianic body is immaculately conceived at Nazareth in 7-6 AD, in the odes LUKE (1:26-37) sings to the dishonored Mary (whom Gospel gives as both Μαριά "Maria" and Μαριάμ "Mariam," both short for Μαριάμη 'Mariamne'---the name of Herod's Hasmonean royal-flesh bridge, burned so unjustly in a scandal with a Joseph). Whereas the Messianic body is the successor to the aggressive patriotism and Messianic plan of none other than Jannaeus himself, this Messianic body gets merged with Jannai's legacy, in the literary memorial to Jannai hidden in the subtext of the Nathan Pericope which forwards JOHN:
✪✪ THE NATHAN PERICOPE CLOBBERS NAZARETH --- ROYALLY ✪✪
Nathaniel said to him: Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him: "Come and see!" Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward Him (coming toward Jesus, hence approaching Messianic kingship) And [Jesus] said: "Here is an Israelite! In that there is no deceit!" Nathaniel asked Him: "Where do you know me from?" Telling him the Jesus answers: "Before Phillip called you I saw you under the fig-tree" (I saw you in the Temple before love called you) Nathaniel responded: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Telling him the Jesus answers: "You believe this because I said to you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than that!" (greater things than Herod's expensive Temple) Then He lays it down for him: "Truly, truly I tell you! You will see the sky open! And the angels of God will ascend and descend on the Son of Man!" (You---YES YOU---will be the Temple of Yahweh, and the legacy of Hasmonean piety will continue to increase despite the Temple's destruction! God willing it!)
---JOHN (1:43-51)
Israel's King Jannai was rejected in the Jerusalem Temple, in circumstances Jesus and the Galilean sect later recalled when they too were rejected in the Jerusalem Temple. These were signs that the Temple had run its course of life, to enter into the stage of its final climactic purpose. Seeking to not only maintain, but expand the preeminent legacy of the WORD in a world without a stone Temple, Josephus needed to make sense of the Temple's destruction to his audience. Using the disciple Nathan-El, (a reflexive doppelganger for King Jannaeus, whose proper Hebrew name was Yehu-Nathan), Josephus identifies the seeds of the Temple's demise in the citrons pelted at King Jannaeus in the Temple's inner court. There and then did the Maccabean effort reach high noon, with the precarious union of church and state---priest and king---teetering on the edge, as Jannaeus was unleashing all the power at his disposal to protect the union of Galilee and Judaea---Israel together with Judah---in a united Messianic kingdom of Eretz-Israel, reformed by the wit and effort of Jannai's Divinely inspired lineage. Like the fig tree, the Temple was a symbol of the fecundity and security of Israel (1 KINGS 4:25, PROVERBS 27:18, JOEL 2:21-25, LUKE 13:6-9, SONG 2:13, MARK 11:12-20, MATTHEW 24:1-2, 24:32-35). Once the religious observance degenerated into a so called literal interpretation of the WORD, it set up the conditions which allowed social justice to steadily erode in the interest of a segment of the religious elite who appeased foreign powers at the expense of native powers and peoples, while they themselves remained well ensconced by their corrupt literalist system. The critical phase of this process took place under the Romans and Herodians, as the burdens of the yearly Roman tribute tax, a strictly enforced Temple tax, and further Herodian fees and taxes, increasingly forced many young men into debt and drove them off the land---offering a multitude the choice between brigandage or slavery. The Nathaniel Pericope is only in JOHN, and it is only there, in that one brief allusion to the fig tree metaphor at the center of that pericope, that one will find any mention at all of a fig tree in the entire text of JOHN. In order to understand the Nathaniel Pericope, Josephus requires that his readers study how he employs the Old Testament roots of the fig tree metaphor in his three earlier Gospels. Add to this that the name "Nathan" is only mentioned in the JOHN gospel, and JOHN only mentions Nathan once outside the Nathaniel Pericope. In fact, the way Nathan concludes the first chapter of JOHN, forwards that Gospel with Nathan's Pericope, then, due to the rarity of his cameo, Nathan also sort of introduces the last chapter of JOHN, where Nathan is qualified among the witnesses to a social justice puzzle, which concludes the JOHN Gospel with the appearance of the resurrect Jesus beside the catch of 153 predatory Biny-fish. There Nathan is identified as a resident of Cana. His Hellenized character, like that of King Alexander Jannai before him, is indicated by his pairing with the Greek named Philip, and thus his conflation in the Synoptic Gospels with another Greek named disciple---Bartholomew (Bar-Ptolemy: a name with roots in Canaan both pre-Alexandrian and ostensibly pre-Judges, whereas along with proto-Hellenic names Anak, Macaah, and other key proto-Hellenic loan words in Hebrew, this Indo-European name so particular to the Davidic lineage, represents what is best described here as a current of the Dananoi/Denyen element which penetrated into the Levant right onto the Kings Highway, from Sidon, through Geshur). Nathan's identity as a Galilean from Cana sets up multiple contexts for the line: "Here is an Israelite---in that there is no deceit!" (among which cf. GENESIS 49:16, without missing, that whether it be the province of a fabulously ornate historical metaphor, or even if it be an otherwise totally evacuated archaism, the fact remains that the Hasmonean nativity at Modi'in sprang out of Joshua's seafront lot for Dan---a lot whose inland capital was at a junction evidently later refashioned into Emmaus-Nicopolis). Joe's emphasis of the truth in the stock of Galilee's Israelite roots, ultimately snaps a down to earth shot of the big bad royal Jannai, not merely with reference to Jannai's northern upbringing, but for Jannai's quick and timely cementing together, and competent rule, of Eretz-Israel---a Herculean feat if ever there was one. Josephus crafted a second set of allusions to Jannai, which are rooted in the same Nazareth/Nazarene nexus. The seeker begins to get an inkling, that these hairy word roots themselves somehow point to a special connection linking the Jesus movement to King Jannai and the Hasmoneans. The Nazareth conception is central to the braiding together of Jesus with Samson in the interplay between MATTHEW (2:23) and JUDGES (13:5, 16:17), realizing that the Hebrew Nazareth (Natzaret נצרת) comes from A): the trilateral N-TZ-R root meaning "to guard," "keep safe," and sometimes even "keep secret" or "keep hidden," all evidently shoots off from an early word for "branch," or "bough," and reflecting the protection and shelter that tree branches provide from the sun, wind, and rain, both naturally and by their use in construction and horticultural supports, moreover used figuratively for a human line of descent, as in "a branch of the family." In contrast Nazirite (Nazir נזיר) comes from B): the trilateral root N-Z-R, with the meaning of "separated" or "consecrated [to God]." Thus this-here purple sidebar, waxing under Jannai's seal illustration, must briefly branch-off further from the Roman stints of Cassius Longinus at Gennesareth, to set up the context for Samson's seismic quaking of Emmaus, which shook the contemporary gastric disease to its urban Italic epicenters, in Joe's most solemn wake. Via slip up and down the following fault-planes in the WORD, the ginormous body of the Samsonic Nazarene brought down many temples:
✪✪ (A): ANGEL VISITS NAZARETH MAMA MARY ✪✪
Moreover in the sixth month God sent the angel Gabriel to a city (πόλιν polin, not only a "city," but also body of citizens) in Galilee whose name was Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the name of the virgin was Mariam ... and the angel said to her: "Fear not Miriam! For you have truly found favor with God! Now behold (also: "Though realize"), you will conceive in stomach! (ἐν γαστρὶ--en gastri: "in [your] stomach," or even: "inside a stomach," whereas the Greek "stomach" (gastri) was also a euphemism for a "gourmand," "epicure," or "glutton")! And you will call the name of Him ! ---: "Jesus!" ("Yahweh's Deliverance!" i.e. Joshua! [Help Me Please!]) He will be huge! (Like Samson/Hercules and even Athronges!) And He will be called "Son of the Most High [God]" (a quality not only acclaimed for David by the Jews, but also acclaimed for Hercules by the Greeks and Romans. Realize that many of the most important Hebrew titles of God, including "El," "Elyon," and "Elohim," are titles borrowed from a Pagan context and used in a Monotheistic one). And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He (Jesus: "Yahweh's Deliverance"!) will reign over the House of Jacob (i.e. over Israel) to [the end of] the ages. And His kingdom will never end. ---:(note the emphasis on the importance of names, which highlights how the prompt to call the theophoric name "Jesus" circumvents---even mocks---the taboo on speaking "the name" Yahweh).
✪✪ (B): HE WILL BE CALLED A NAZARENE ✪✪
Moreover having been recruited (χρηματισθεὶς, from χρημα---a legally binding agreement, hence recruited to public action or service up to an understood standard) in a dream (come true!), He (He/he---: Joe) returned to the district of Galilee, and having come he dwelt in a city (πόλιν polin) called Nazareth, so that it would be fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophets, that He will be called a Nazarene.
✪✪ (C): ANGEL VISITS NAZIRITE SAMSON'S MAMA ✪✪
Now there was a certain man of Zorah of the families of the Danites whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had not given birth. And the angel of Yahweh appeared to the woman and said to her: "Behold, now you are barren and have not given birth, but you shall conceive and bear a son. I pray therefore you now beware and do not drink wine or any strong drink nor eat anything unclean. For behold you will conceive and bear a son, and a razor (מורה --- this word literally means: "an exchange(r)" or "a substitute") will never levy (עלה --- the same root can mean both "go up" and "take away," "grow," and "chew") upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.
The Samsonic size Gabriel predicts for Mary's delivery from Yahweh, near the end of the first chapter of LUKE (1:26-33, (A)), quietly sets up the Nazarene bait and switch allusion that MATTHEW (2:22-23 (B)) spins off Danite Samson's placental Naziritism in JUDGES (13:2-5, (C)). To confirm for the reader that they are not imagining this bait-and switch from Nazarene to Nazirite, the earlier portion of the same first chapter of LUKE (1:1-15, (D)), embeds an even neater allusion to the text of Samson's placental Naziritism in JUDGES (13:2-5, (C)), laying the Nazirite references even more completely into the lines which describe Baptist cousin John's annunciated coeval gestation with Jesus. Gabriel works this additional Divine sampling of JUDGES (C) on Mary's cousin Liz (D), right before Gabe's herald of Mary's gastronomical giant (A): ✪✪ (D): FATHER-MERCY, THE NAZIRITE, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT ✪✪ There was a certain priest named Zechariah of the division Abijah, and his wife named Elizabeth was of the daughters of Aaron ... and they had no child because Elizabeth was barren ... an angel of the Lord appeared to him (to Zechariah while he was on duty as Priest in the Jerusalem Temple) to the right of the altar of the incense (right in front of the veil which separated the most "Holy Place" or "Holy of Holies" from the rest of the Temple)... then the angel of the Lord said to him: "Fear not Zechariah for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear a son to you, and you will call the name of Him---: "Yohanan!" ("Yahweh's Mercy!" i.e. John) He will indeed be huge before the Lord, and wine and strong drink no not shall he drink (unlike English, in both Greek and Hebrew usages, double negatives do not indicate a positive, but are still a negative---in Greek an emphatic negative, except of course when the emphasis is hyperbole), for he will be filled of the Holy Spirit (in both Greek and Hebrew also: "Holy Wind" or "Holy Breath") even from his mother's womb. ---: (note again the double-edged prompt to call a theophoric name, this time "John." There would be such a huge mass of cries for mercy from Yahweh after the murder of Herod's Mariamne, that Yahweh would bring on the last prophecy in the Tanakh---His Great and Terrible Day: cf. LUKE 1:17, MALACHI 4:1-6).
---LUKE (1:1-15) (segues right into extract (A))
When collating this passage of LUKE to its source in JUDGES, one must first notice, how the parallelism of the composition, tangles the concept of Naziritism with that of the Holy Spirit (τοῦ Πνεύματος τοῦ Ἁγίου). The Hebrew phrase "Holy Spirit" (רוח הקודש) is only used three times in the Old Testament (PSALM 51:11, ISAIAH 63:10,63:11). It could not have been lost on the ears of Galileans, that ISAIAH 63 speaks of a time when there is no Jerusalem Temple (63:18), when a wrathful Holy Spirit had vacated that sanctuary in anger (63:10), and was called to return to the people in the form of a Messiah who would tread the winepress of slaughter, to soak his raiment dripping red with the blood of Edom, which, for the Galilean Sect, offered a clear cipher for the Edomite Herodians, and their master---Rome. This martial kink on Naziritism, is reflected with the "rising and felling of many in Israel," which Jesus Himself was to cause, by a 'soul piercing sword' in LUKE 2:28-35 (cf. DEUTERONOMY 33:29, JEREMIAH 4:18). The discussion will thus need to gradually elaborate, how due to the official ban on a Nazirite's presence at a human death (a regulation Samson likewise flouts with a great flourish), this martial transformation of the Nazirite would not be permissible---that is unless and until one realizes the meaning behind the Zealot wedding at Cana (where mikveh water stored in stone jars for ritual purification purposes, is transformed into bloody New Covenant wine), which ciphers a blood-bath mikveh related to Messianic Baptism. The Hebrew concept of the "Holy Spirit" (or more technically "Spirit of the Holy Place"---i.e. Yahweh's) speaks of Yahweh's presence (or Shekhinah שְׁכִינָה) before the Ark of the Covenant, normally seated behind the Temple veil. Access to this presence by the King of Israel (i.e. the Messiah), imparted prophetic insight through communion with God's angels (i.e. "messengers"). The title "Son of God" was one of Messianic kingship (PSALM 89:26-28, PSALM 2:6-7). Like the breath of Yahweh which brought Adam to life out of the soil, the Holy Spirit resuscitated the Messianic movement at the death of Jesus, when the veil before the Holy Place was torn asunder with His dying breath (MARK 15:38, LUKE 23:45, MATTHEW 27:49-51, all blowing in a matrix which out-gasses into the province of earth science with JOHN 19:34-35, 20:20-22, 20:27-29, 2 SAMUEL 22:2-4, DANIEL 2:34-35, which then grades on into David's missile in MATTHEW 16:13-20: where the "rock" morphs into the very concept, that the everyday mortal man of faith---Ben Adam: the Son of Man---who suffers, dies, and is buried, is by nature a Son of the Living God, and a Messiah of an everlasting kingdom). Israel itself had been set apart as a royal nation---the Son of God among the Gentiles in the macro sense, as best stated by Moses himself in DEUTERONOMY (32:1-43), where the lines of DEUTERONOMY (specifically: 32:3, 32:15, and 32:18), get amplified regarding vocalization of the name "Yahweh" in a Galilean context, with: ACTS (4:10-12), 1 PETER (5-7), LUKE (20:9-19), etc.---all evidently composed in the wake of spontaneous Messianic appeals of protest, cried aloud in the Temple at Passover by fed-up masses commandeering PSALM 118 (ponder this boisterous crowd as the collective Jesus in LUKE 20:19). Once the Galilean Sect came of age, the title to kingship/sonship was understood as the province of every initiate in the body of Christ---where "Christ" is the Greek word "Anointed," which translates the Hebrew word "Messiah," which in turn refers to Yahweh's King (LUKE 3:21, 6:35, ROMANS 8:14, MATTHEW 5:9). Hence the inspired texts tell that to be "Christian," is to be filled with the presence of Yahweh and execute functions of a Messianic King whose kingdom will never end. The Great Revolt can not be understood without this "Nazarene" doctrine, which signaled a rejection of the corrupted Jerusalem Temple, by a critical mass of the "preserved" shoots of Israel who had for centuries made the Second Temple the focus of their worship, but who, after Roman/Herodian rule superseded the Hasmonean Kingdom, soon became of a united aim to cleanse that once Holy House or destroy it. In the context of hurling the stone at Rome, Yahweh's establishment of a mock sacrificial system for a Temple He would one day destroy for good, can be viewed as though it were the necessary fashioning of a trick sling-shot, trimmed, with all the bells and whistles of a cosmic drama, for a life or death revelation to the human species. Pulling this sling back into the playful statement of MATTHEW 2:23 (B): "So that it would be fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophets (prophets plural, hence spoken by more than one prophet, or in the books of the prophets taken together as a division of the Tanakh), that He would be called a Nazarene," one will quickly find that this prophetic tension is not so enigmatic as the commentators of clueless doctrines present it. Though the analysis (connecting extracts A-D) definitively shows Josephus couches this riddle in allusions to a prophetic herald of Samson's birth as a Nazarite from the womb, it must be considered that if the Greek title Nazarene transliterates a form from the Hebrew N-TZ-R root---as the implied harmony of the title Nazarene with the place Nazareth suggests, then the seeker must search elsewhere for Old Testament prophecies which make a more succinct fit with the mundane criterion of MATTHEW (2:23), than does the revolutionary repackaging of the N-TZ-R root inside the N-Z-R root of a super-mundane Nazirite Samson. Commentators who are caught in clueless doctrines, while having rightly pointed at the tighter fit found in ISAIAH 11, have done so without anything but a superficial understanding of what ISAIAH 11 is all about, whereas they merely focus on the first line which displays the proper trilateral root. However the red branch in ISAIAH (11:1) adorns a prophecy concerned first with Jerusalem's fall to the Babylonians, at the very end of what the spurious divisions of ISAIAH have very suspiciously made into the previous chapter (10). This sudden break blurs the distinction between the fall of Assyria and the fall of Judah, to such an extent, that the average reader is robbed of the crucial context to the sprouting of ISAIAH's new Messianic Branch:
✪✪ MIGHTY WHITEY WILL FALL AND A ROD WILL RISE FROM JESSE'S STUMP ✪✪
Behold! With a terrible crash, the Lord Yahweh of the Armies will lop off the bough (פֻּארָ֖ה first of several synonyms for "Branch" in a matrix of horticultural metaphors for human social structure), and cut down the ones of high stature (elite humans likened unto high tree branches), and the haughty will be humbled (the glittering canopy falls to the decay on the floor). For with iron (i.e with swords) He will cut down the thickets of the forest (i.e. destroy the clan structures which organize the populace), and the mighty Lebanon will fall (here juts the summit to a mountain of Biblical evidence that reveals it was for more reasons than just the provenance of its many Cedar pillars, that Solomon's Jerusalem palace was called "House of the Lebanon Forest," (literally "House of the Forest of Whiteness"), whereas here this palace becomes a simile for the royal family and nobility of the Kingdom of Judah, when the palace is read properly embedded in its context within the underlying horticultural simile wherein wood represents the history and qualities of people; thus this clause calls the "House" (i.e. the royal line) of David/Solomon: "the Great White One," (or the "Mighty Whitey" as it were) whereas לְבָנוֹן "Lebanon" means "[Place of] Whiteness," (cf. 1 KINGS 7:2, 10:17, 10:21, 2 KINGS 14:9, 2 CHRON 9:16, etc.; and furthermore consider also the implied melanin deficiency of Jacob's Aramean Father-in-Law "Laban," mythic sire of the favorite womb(s) of Israel). This is not racism; it is the unvarnished historical narrative. Truth is endangered, if, out of some misplaced politically correct chivalry, all discussion shies away from these mythologized demographic testimonies. Ignoring the inconvenient minorities of the past does not promote a harmonious future. Ultimately, the palace simile gives another clue to the import of Phoenicia in this ruling family, in its Temple, and in its rise to power, all summed up by ISAIAH in similes, as this family tree-house was about to get lost, right here, in the abyssal gap between ISAIAH CHAPTER 10 and ISAIAH CHAPTER 11---a spurious editorial break that ... "will fall")! And a rod (חֹ֖טֶר both a "twig," or ordinary wooden "stick," and also a "staff [of office]," here as a "shoot" of new growth after injury) will come forth from the stump of Jesse. And a Branch (נֵ֫צֶר --- netser, pronounced nay'-tser: this is the trilateral N-TZ-R word: "Branch": a horticultural term used in human genealogy---a new family line: literally the "Keeper(s)," "Guard(s)," or "Preserver(s)" of the paternal name and/or tradition) will rise from his roots ... And it will again come to pass in that day, the Lord will set His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people (a second Exodus), those who still remain will be recovered from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hammath, and from the islands of the Sea. And He will lift up a sail in the nations, and the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah will be gathered from the four corners of the earth ... And He will shake his hand over the River [Euphrates] with his scorching wind, and strike its seven streams (i.e. strike it in all seven of its major tributaries), and make it so they will be crossed dry-shod. Then there will be a highway for his people who are left in Assyria, like it was for Israel in the day He came up out of Egypt.
---ISAIAH (10:33-11:16)
✪✪ JEREMIAH'S N-TZ-R NATZIRITE, REFERS TO NORTHERN KINGDOM ISRAELITES ✪✪
"Israel: If you would return" says Yahweh (i.e. would return to sovereignty in the land from out of captivity) "Then return to Me (i.e. return to keeping the covenant), for if you banish your filthy things from my presence without wavering, and if, in truth, justice, and righteousness, you will swear: "As Yahweh lives!" (i.e. swear again with full faith in Survival, even though Israel was vanquished by Assyria) then I will bless you in the Nations for glory. For this is what Yahweh has to say to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: (as the chapter bears out, much of Jeremiah's own prophetic stance was shared by the faithful remnant in the Northern Kingdom, both those who managed to avoid deportation and those who gradually escaped from exile to trickle back into Israel) "Break up your fallow ground and do not sew among thorns! (here lays the root of the Parable of the Sower, with all its instruction on the proper way to read the Bible; the thorns are the secular culture's gateways to the infertile sadistic sexuality of the marketplace.) Remove the foreskins from your hearts you men of Judah and Jerusalem! Circumcise yourselves to Yahweh! (these lines graphically imply sadism and sexual misconduct, for in light of the cultural norms of behavior that Jeremiah rails against, the circumcisions of their flesh were without merit; cf. DEUTERONOMY 6:5, 30:6, 10:12-20, MATTHEW 22:36-37, LUKE 10:25-37, MARK 12:28-34, LEVITICUS 26:40-42, PSALM 51:10-12) Or, due to your evil deeds, My fury will arrive like a fire that burns without quenching! (i.e. you will become an unending sacrifice) ... Then I (Jeremiah) said: "Alas! (i.e. "Woe!") Lord Yahweh! Surely you have beguiled this beguiling people and Jerusalem, saying: "You will have peace!" while the sword reaches to the soul (cf. LUKE 2:35, where, in the Jerusalem Temple, Mary is told by Simon (Thassi) that a sword will "pass through" her soul too. One can hardly overemphasize the importance which the prophetic pen of Josephus made of this chapter, especially this complicated line; hence reconsider JOHN 20:21 and MATTHEW 10:34). In due time this people and Jerusalem will speak of a dry wind from the peaks of the desert [blowing] upon the daughter of my people (a wrathful Divine spirit against Israel's daughter Jerusalem) ... See! He moves like the clouds! Whirlwinds for His chariots! His horses are swifter than eagles! (see how Joe pulls his Messianic victory out of the jaws of defeat by building on how DANIEL 7:13 resonates here: cf. MARK 14:62, MATTHEW 24:30) Woe to us! We are ruined! (i.e. "Woe to us Jerusalemites!"---to those who comprise the city---hence: "Woe to Jerusalem! The City is destroyed!") Oh Jerusalem, wash the wickedness from your heart and be saved! How long will your wicked schemes lodge inside you! (i.e. lodge: spend the night inside you, indulge at the inn---deliberately indicating that the sin rapes the sinner!) For from Dan a voice makes it known: Mount Ephraim's affliction is heard (down beyond the symbolic depth where "Dan" means "Judge" and the "Mound Ephraim" ultimately suggests the fruit of the human womb in the context of Jeremiah's wail against the Tophet, whether that Tophet were right out in the open, or cleverly hidden in plain site by the elite twisted brutes of a society their Tophet enterprises degenerated, the sophistication to the composition's semantic dove-tails, implies the youth of Israel's remnant in the Mount Ephraim area was prey to the Jerusalem market). Report it to the Nations! See! (Behold! ... Witness!) Proclaim against Jerusalem! Keepers come! (come/return: "Keepers," "Guards," 'Branchees': this is the relevant prophetic use of the N-TZ-R root word: נצרים Notzerim---compare with "Nazareth": נצרת Natzaret; this crescendo of the chapter refers back to the Israelites recruited for glory in the prologue which leads this extract with: "Israel if you would return then return to Me!") [Come] From far away lands! And they contribute their voices against Jerusalem! (surely these נֹצְרִ֥ים Notzerim are only worthy of this designation if they were what Jeremiah recruited: the moral trellis that supports and guards the sobering vine planted by the one and only true God of fertility and species survival; never were they, nor can they ever be, the "Enemies" which the translation in the 1998 COMPLETE JEWISH BIBLE (CJB) xenophobically paraphrases into English with absolutely no relation to the lexicographic root, and hence with little apparent respect for the moral intent of the prophetic WORD---a standing translational insult to the sound family values of the overwhelming majority of Jewish people everywhere. The translator of this passage in the CJB props up a stance, that on its surface suggests: "leave it to the (syndicate of) tenured authorities," which smacks of an extralegality all too familiar in Christianity and Islam as well; further depth to the CJB translator's paraphrase, intentional or unintentional, is indexed with a lexicographic table below.)
---JEREMIAH (4:1-16)
Leaving aside for now, the pivotal humiliation, of the royal High Priest Jannai His predecessor, certainly the intractable Messianic movement of Jesus was the all-time paradigm of these Hebrew Cassandras, whom Jeremiah solicits here with scholastic flair. The commentary above cites the potent corollaries between the Gospels and JEREMIAH (Chapter 4), to establish that this call to witness broadcast by JEREMIAH five centuries earlier, resonated loudly and personally with those whose experience in post-Hasmonean Galilee smacked of a twisted betrayal by all segments of the national infrastructure centered in Jerusalem. Hence it should be no surprise that the modern Hebrew word for "Christians" is Notzerim הנוצריים, whereas these corollaries between the Gospel and JEREMIAH (4) provide provenance which connects this term with the Galilean Sect and thus with the very first Christians that movement recruited. The Spear of Destiny Puzzle points at how the roots of this term were buttressed by the voices and militias of the exiled tribes of Israel. Their song wails above and beyond the corollaries in the commentary above, a song wherein anyone familiar with the Gospel, should, upon reading JEREMIAH (4), immediately hear the resounding "Woes!" centered in the Little Apocalypse---"Woes!" with which Jesus proclaimed impending doom upon Jerusalem and the Temple via Rome, in the same manner as JEREMIAH predicted the earlier doom via Babylon. The Gospel's apocalyptic laments actually begin with the "Woe" Jesus cries out against the Roman world due to the abuse of children and revenge of the putti (MATTHEW 18:1-10), a Samsonic "Woe!" which will toss this sidebar back to the Spear of Destiny as it pierces the buttress at Magdala.
✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪
 ABOVE: THE WORD BECAME FLESH: Not "Enemies," but "Branches," "Guard[ian]s," "Keepers" of the Covenant. In his signature style, it is only via his Nazarene vs Nazirite Riddle, that Josephus reveals the most loaded Hebrew name by which the Zealots called themselves: נצרים --- the Notzeriem. Provenance that directly connects Christianity to the Zealous Galilean Sect of Judaism, is thus preserved by terms which survive to designate "Christians" in Modern Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic (نصراني --- Nasrani), all these Semitic words being usages which ultimately derive directly from the Zealot Sect's dedication to Jeremiah's and Isaiah's prophetic uses of the N-TZ-R root, whereas these terms only relate to the so called "city" (polis) of Jesus's annunciation in a most circuitous manner (see how, via a perception of Paul at ACTS 24:5-6, the Greek term Nazarene is most subtly defined as designating a religious sect guilty of offences against Herod's Temple). The authenticity of this zealous provenance is resolved by: A) the Gospel corollaries to JEREMIAH (4) which ride in orbit around this trilateral root, B) the Spear of Destiny Puzzle, which mimes a battle above Biblical roots which relate the relevant Hebrew N-TZ-R forms to the Zionist restoration of Israel---a Herculean feat duly accomplished by Jannaeus, C) the mockery of Pagan Roman ceremony embedded in the Divinely inspired mythos of Samson. The unfounded definition of "Enemies," is given for JEREMIAH's term נצרים Notzeriem, by an English translation of the Tanakh published under the name "The Complete Jewish Bible" (CJB), with its bias professed right in its clever title---a title which simulates the opinion that the Greek Gospels are not Divinely inspired Jewish cannon. Some may think these scholars doth protest too much. Leaving aside the crypto-Pagan corruption of iconic Christianity, the authors of the CJB might reconsider the influence of the late Septuagint tradition on the final Masoretic text. Tardy provenances to Samson's drama, could be viewed in relation to the post-Apocalyptic redactors of the Masoretic text working-around the taboo on voicing the name, of the messenger who took on the name "Flavius" to roll the work-horse inside New-Troy's walls (here consider the Greek embellishment upon 1 SAMUEL 17:32 which is unique to ANTIQUITIES 6:180 & 6:188, while pondering the curious Hebrew double-speak at 1 SAMUEL 17:25, where the superfluous "in Israel" qualifies a "[tax-]free" reward absent from the Septuagint and ANTIQUITIES, but curiously parallel to LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 76/429). Similarly, the Masoretic inflation of Goliath's size (6'9" in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, and Josephus, vs. 9'9" in the Masoretic) befits the Messiah's greater assymetricity versus a telescope view of the well trained Roman opponent; both Josephus and the Masoretic text call the opponents of Samson and boy David "Philistines," while the Septuagint merely styles them as "foreign tribesmen." It must be noted that only brief fragments of JUDGES survive from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and those fragments evidence a shorter text than the Masoretic. Nothing about Samson is evident, and if a most ancient witness of JUDGES once came to a clear ending even before Samson's chapters, it certainly would be found alarming to some; others realize JUDGES is a quilt of panels woven onto the ancient Song of Debra. The Judge Samson's name plays well off Samuel's, as does his Naziritism, though the more explicit account of Samuel's Naziritism in the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls at 1 SAMUEL 1:22 is omitted in the Masoretic, cutting the account of Samuel's Naziritism down to the parallel with Samson's birth in 1 SAMUEL 1:11. (The weave of these variants teaches that Naziritism was a discipline which trained prophets and special forces, with those two hats largely interchangeable.) Further unwitnessed by any of the four Dead Sea Scrolls of SAMUEL, is a give-away telescope to the Hasmonean legacy, dialed up by the way that the stone which represents Yahweh's everlasting Messianic kingdom in DANIEL (2:31-45), is conflated by 1 SAMUEL (17:47-49)---conflated both with A): David's brook-stone missile (cut out of the mountain not by human hands; cf. PSALM 49:1-2, ANTIQUITIES 6:187) and with B): "the name of Yahweh" בשם יהוה; (cf. 2 SAMUEL 7:13-16, ANTIQUITIES 10:207-210, LUKE 1:32-33, 20:17-18, 1 PETER 2:4-10, ISAIAH 28:16-19, DANIEL 4:34, 6:26, 7:14-27, REVELATION 11:13-15, PSALM 118:22, PSALM 18, and the "zeal" in ISAIAH 9:7). The Dead Sea Scroll of SAMUEL likewise rushes into the rocky earth science of PSALM 18, without leaving a witness to the Septuagint's and Masoretic Text's anomalous Gileadite-Bethlehemite groom of 2 SAMUEL 21:19 who kills Goliath in David's stead. Some conjecture that the apparent contradiction of 2 SAMUEL 21:19 is due to a scribal error, which is plainly preposterous since there can not have been a Hebrew scribe so ignorant as to not have known David killed Goliath, thus instead of a copiest's error, the redactors approved an informative play on the words. Such Biblical literary devices zip-file volumes of information. Typical---this variant line 2 SAMUEL 21:19 collates key ciphers, rooted in the other Danite migration, the one out of Bashan, but in the context of a telescope on the Great Revolt, sprung by Dan's progeny into a spectacular flower one millennium forward; hence when this key line ends with Goliath's spear described "like a weavers loom-beam," that finish relates how Yahweh's scriptural tapestry (which foils the feasts of Goliath's Pagan sampler), is, itself, a spiritual weapon, what's more the veil on an esoteric sanctuary, every pious one may enter, on this the third stone, sling shot full round the sun. Among those who congregate at an iconic wall of woe, a small minority today still seek to rebuild a Jerusalem Temple where animal sacrifice would be employed, in the belief the blood of rams could---in the Twenty-First Century---atone for human sin rather than accrue it. In hindsight, most believe the end of that religious system was just as natural and righteous as the progression from Polytheism to Henotheism to Monotheism. After the Bar Kokhba Rebellion failed, the redactors of the Masoretic Text appear to have arrived early in the awareness that the animal sacrifices had come to an end exactly when they were supposed to come to an end. Hence their opinion may be resolved as quite different from later redactors of the Talmuds, who, downwind of the authors of the CJB, at times tend to highlight the worst of Sadducee theology, grumbling that the Tanakh is quite complete without a Messiah or a Messianic movement thank you. Holy Moses! That Zionism is Messianism by nature, is something that a portion of the Ultra-Orthodox who make anti-Zionist professions know intimately. Jealousy of the Hasmoneans and Josephus knows no end. Still today all light those eight candles with one. The exodus from ignorance is salvation.
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The destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 AD was a prophesied time called “The Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh” (יום יהוה הגדול והנורא). Four decades earlier circa 30 AD, Jesus is already privy to the stellar plot of this prophecy, when His Little Apocalypse discourse points at the Jerusalem Temple and declares: “Do you see all of this? (i.e. see the huge blocks of Herod’s grand Temple) I tell you truly that there is not even a stone on top of a stone here that will not been thrown down … this generation will not pass away until all these things have unfolded” (MATTHEW 24:2...24:34). Jesus introduces this Little Apocalypse with seven cries of “Woe!” upon the Pharisees and Law Teachers who were His contemporaries (MATTHEW 23:13-39), wherein the seventh “Woe!” holds them responsible for this most epic destruction of Jerusalem, with that blame due to these Pharisees being the contemporary owners of the religious trait which continually tries to assassinate the prophetic WORD with a corrupt version of literalism. Read how these seven Pharisaic “Woes!” (MATTHEW 23:13-39) calculate bloodguilt from the Great and Terrible 70 AD, all the way back to when Cain murdered Abel at the very beginning of the world (MATTHEW 23:35-38); then take the refrain of that summation in the ensuing Little Apocalypse of MATTHEW (24:21): “There will indeed then be great tribulation, such as has not existed from the beginning of the world until now,” and compare it to its clear and deliberate parallel in WARS (1:0:4): “Accordingly it seems to me that all the misfortunes of all nations, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared with these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were (i.e. no nation’s misfortunes could compare with the gravity of Jewish misfortune centered about the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem. Joe continues:); while the authors of them (i.e. the authors of these misfortunes suffered by the Jews) were not foreigners, it makes it impossible for me to restrain my lamentations (i.e. it makes it impossible for Joe to restrain his “Woes!” whereas they flow from a great and terrible tradition).” This “Good Grief!” sleight of hand in Joe’s preface feigns to blame the Galileans, while the cross reference to the “Woes!” of MATTHEW (23:35-38) points instead at a Pharisaic target for his charges. The roots of this Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh are planted by the prophetic authors in: DANIEL 12:1, EZEKIEL 5:9, JOEL 2:2, and MALACHI 4:1-5. Whereas MALACHI prophesied against the Second Temple, the Pharisaic halacha which subsequently produced a defacto ban on any further prophecy, had a terribly emasculating effect on Judaism. Note that the Seven Woes Upon the Pharisees highlight the Yahwehist point to the spoken oath of JEREMIAH (4:2 in the commentary above): “you will swear: “As Yahweh Lives!,”” whereas the oath-governing rules that Jesus attacks in these Pharisaic “Woes!” (MATTHEW 23:16-22), were rules related to the Pharisaic taboo on speaking the name “Yahweh”---a taboo duly squashed by the argument of MATTHEW (23:21-22). Meanwhile, the new command Jesus gives, namely forbidding the swearing of any oaths at all (MATTHEW 5:33-35), was a proscription which incited revolt, whereas it duly prevented all Christians from swearing the obligatory oaths which the evil one Caesar required of citizens when transacting various forms of legal business, essentially the same oaths which evil Caesar expected from non citizen subjects as they paid the tribute tax. This New Covenant oath-ban was validated by the prompt to trump the empty piety of the Pharisees with an even more extreme paradigm of behavior pointed for wartime (MATTHEW 5:20); what’s more, it was necessitated by the sling-shot, stone Temple’s imminent self-destructive firing, vis a vis ISAIAH (66:1) and PSALM (11:4), (cf. ACTS 7:49, JAMES 5:12). Hence Jesus ends his Cassandra-pitched diatribe against the Pharisees and their Caesar-appeasing Jerusalem, by informing them via conundrum (at MATTHEW 23:38-39) that both: A) the Messiah is the Temple (i.e. “Delivery from Yahweh”) (23:38), and: B) they will never see the Messiah again (even if He be among them), as long as they literally refuse to bless anyone who “comes in the name of the Lord” (23:39), whereas the “name of the Lord” in question is “Yahweh.” This conundrum makes a Messianic point of unassailable capital logic, worthy of being pondered with circumspect awareness. For Jesus subverts the taboo on voicing God’s name while emphasizing how this Pharisaic halachah against vocalizing “Yahweh” could never conform to the Messianic jubilance of PSALM 118:26, a Psalm which this discussion has already connected to spontaneous Passover outbursts by Galilean pilgrims in Herod’s Temple---Galileans who sang the provocative lines of PSALM 118:25-26, which were indeed written to be sung aloud in chorus during that holiday: אנא יהוה הושיעה נא אנא יהוה הצליחה נא׃ “We pray Yahweh! Save us now! We pray Yahweh! Send us success now! Blessed is He who comes in the name of Yahweh! From the Temple of Yahweh we bless you!” Joe’s report prompts his students to calculate the costs, of the Pharisees rejecting Jannaeus in the Temple, and then rejecting the Galileans in the Temple after him, all while weighing how that cost accrues in both the temporal and spiritual realms, whereas it relates to stiff-necked Pharisaic pride, regarding a demonstrably corrupted ideology of the Divine and His intent, vis a vis His name “Yahweh.” The branches which shoot off Pharisaic Judaism should consider, that If the Hasmoneans and Jannaeus had not reinforced Israel to lead the resistance to Rome’s expansion into the Fertile Crescent, then Caesar’s idols would have been installed on the Temple Mount as objects of sworn oaths and worship before the reign of a Caligula, and Judaism would most likely never have won the respect and allies that allowed Pharisaic Judaism to survive and thrive, not merely despite, but in fact because of the Galilean revolt, while the two other major wars against Rome which followed it, prompted further Jewish led resistance to Trajan and Hadrian in Mesopotamia. The smart of Joe’s stinging laments, was no doubt related to the harsh criticism he himself received, for his surprisingly successful, if in places bitterly destructive, Messianic program. Any circumspect study of scripture will agree, that destruction of God’s Holy City and God’s Holy Temple, could only be wrought by God’s own will. The prohibition on speaking God’s name was tantamount to closing the book on all prophecy. Josephus knew too well that if there was any city and nation, whose situation made prophecy essential to its survival, it was his. The mysterious Messianic “work-around” Joe was inspired to craft to the need at hand, vindicates its own authority. That Joe continued to endeavor at such a laborious task that was so personally thankless at the human macro level, vindicates his own character, and exhibits his dedication to God and God’s WORD. Joe’s revilers might consider, that to those on other branches of the tree, the refusal to consider that the God of the Tanakh would never unleash the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem without sending a contemporary divinely inspired prophet, makes such a reviler’s faith in the Tanakh appear shallow and/or unreasoned. For if this messenger in the Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh was not Josephus, then who was it?work in progress 11-12-15 Few are aware that Josephus, in his signature style, divides Jesus's gloomy voices of "Woe" between his Gospels and his historical memoirs. Hence the acme of these "Woes" is, most seriously, the acme of this planet's black comedy---the very "Woe is Me!" riddle belted out by a 70 AD reprise of Jesus Christ Super-Temple, in a climactic version of His woeful "Death before Slavery!" vow, broadcast in a fiery Yahwehist chicken dance finale, from atop the Roman besieged wall of Jerusalem. In ISAIAH (11:1), where the Messiah will be a "branch" that springs from the Davidic lineage of Jesse. With regards to this bait and switch allusion to Samson, one must contemplate that the conflict between Jannaeus and Roman officials hit closest to home inside the contemporary legacy of Philistine power, at the free-ports of Gaza which Jannaeus captured to take control of the departure points where the Arabian branch of the Far East trade routes bypassed Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt to sail on to Rome. With regards to the garden insignia of Jannaeus, which sealed state documents handled by Roman consulates in Gaza, note the contrast between the N-TZ-R (נֵ֫צֶר tree branches or shoots) of Jesse at ISAIAH (11:1) and the discarded head branch of Babylon at ISAIAH (14:19).
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Monday, November 9, 2015
O HOLY FIRING OF ROME (part one)
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