The Jesus of Genesis: part one

 

To Abraham was born Isaac and to Isaac was born Jacob who was also called Israel.  Jacob fathered twelve sons.  Before Jacob’s death in the fifteenth century BC, he made the following prophecy:

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,

Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,

Until Shiloh comes,

And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

A sceptre was a highly decorated, ceremonial staff held by rulers as a symbol of sovereignty.  Judah was Jacob’s fourth son.  Moses and Joshua divided the land of Palestine between the descendants of the twelve sons of Israel early in the twelfth century BC.

About 1,000 BC, David the Bethlehemite began his reign over the United Kingdom, the core of which was the land of Palestine.  He was a member of the royal tribe of Judah and the first fulfilment of Jacob’s prophecy.

The United Kingdom was divided in 933 BC following the reign of David’s son, Solomon.  The northern kingdom, consisting of the land assigned to the ten northern tribes, took the name Israel and the southern kingdom, the name Judah.  The southern kingdom was comprised of the land allotted to the tribe of Judah and a portion of the land occupied by the tribe of Benjamin, including Jerusalem.  Before that time, the tribe of Judah had absorbed the tribe of Simeon and their land.

Nineteen kings ruled over the kingdom of Judah.  All were descendants of King David.  One queen also governed Judah.  She was the wife of Judah’s fifth king.

Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC by capturing its capital city of Samaria.  However Judah did not suffer the same fate.  Instead it was conquered by Babylon in 586 BC.  Nebuchadnezzar deported all but a few of its inhabitants and appointed a Judean governor called Gedaliah.  The governor was assassinated by a member of Judah’s royal family and the remnant of Judeans, who had banded around Gedaliah, fled to Egypt in fear for their lives.

The kingdom of Judah lay desolate for about forty-five years.  Babylon oversaw a barren land devoid of any subjects.

Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, granted the return of Judeans to their beloved Judah in 538 BC.  He appointed Zerubbabel to lead the 42,360 person exodus from Babylon.  Zerubbabel was a descendant of King David and a member of the royal tribe of Judah.

Alexander the Great defeated the Persians in 331 BC.  Greece became a world empire and Greek, the universal language of the dominion.  Alexander founded the Egyptian city of Alexandria to exhibit the superiority of the Greek way of life.  The Diaspora was encouraged to settle there and Alexandria became a centre for Hellenists—Jews who adopted the Greek culture.  Alexander died in 323 BC and his empire was divided between his four generals. 

The shaggy goat in the Book of Daniel represents the kingdom of Greece and the goat's large horn represents Alexander the Great.  The broken horn and the four horns that arose in its place symbolize the death of Alexander and the four kingdoms that arose from his empire.


Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals, ruled Palestine and Egypt.  That was a time of prosperity for the Jews.  High Priests from the tribe of Levi were responsible for the internal affairs of Judah, called Judea by the Greeks and Romans.  By the time Ptolemy II took the throne, the Jews in Alexandria spoke Greek rather than Hebrew.  Because there was a need for a Greek translation of the Holy Scriptures of Judaism, he commissioned 70 Palestinian Jews to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century BC.

Can We Work Our Way to Heaven?

By the works of the Law shall no mortal man be justified.  The apostle Paul stated emphatically that if you are seeking to be justified by the Law, you must keep the whole Law.  And of course, it’s humanly impossible to keep the whole Law.

Sin and death through sin entered the world through Adam.  But man was not charged with sin until Moses delivered the Law; for where there is no law, there is no violation.  Why the Law?  We wouldn't have come to know sin except through the Law; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.  I wouldn't have known about coveting if the Law hadn't said, "Thou shalt not covet."  But my sinful passions were aroused and sin taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.  Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith.  Indeed, the righteous man shall live by faith.     

So faith comes first.  That is faith in Christ Jesus whereby we receive forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, and adoption as sons of God.  It was for freedom that Christ set us free.  We are no longer slaves of sin. We were born into spiritual death through Adam but we are "born again" into spiritual life through Christ.

Then comes works.  We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  For the whole Law is fulfilled in the statement, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  We know that we love God and we love our neighbour when we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome.     

However, if anyone sins, our Advocate with God the Father is Jesus Christ the righteous.  For if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

At the Heart of Salvation

"By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast."

The Holy Spirit is knocking at the door of man’s heart; that is his mind, his will, his emotions.  Man is a free will being and accepting Christ is an act of man’s will.

Augustine was a Church Father who was esteemed by Protestants and Catholics alike.  Augustine believed that man's will was so totally depraved and bound by sin that he could do nothing toward his salvation.  God bestowed the grace to man to ignite his will so that through faith he could accept the salvation offered by Christ.

"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me."

How Was The New Testament Canon Created?

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

The creation of the New Testament canon was a slow process largely completed by 175 AD.  Admission of a book to the canon was based on three criteria:  Was it written by an Apostle or a person who was a close associate of the Apostles; Did the words of the book have the power of edification when read before a congregation; Was the book in agreement with the established doctrines of faith?

"The historical verification of apostolic authorship or influence and the universal consciousness of the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, resulted in the final decision concerning what books should be considered canonical and worthy of inclusion in what we know as the New Testament."

The Epistles of the Apostle Paul were the first books collected for the canon. They were gathered together by the elders of the Ephesian church.

Paul's Epistles were followed by a collection of the Gospels sometime after 100 AD:

Matthew was a tax collector at Capernaum when Jesus called him to become a disciple and later an Apostle.  Hence, he was an eyewitness to the events described in his Gospel.

Mark was a convert of the Apostle Peter and a companion of the Apostle Paul.  His mother Mary had a house in Jerusalem that was a gathering place for Christians.  Mark finally settled in Rome where he documented the memories of the Apostle Peter.  Both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome. 

Luke was a physician who never actually saw Jesus.  A pagan by birth, he was an early convert who became a companion and co-worker of the Apostle Paul.  He wrote his Gospel for Theophilus who was a cultured Greek.  Therefore, Luke carefully examined the evidence and assigned  precise dates to the events which occurred in his Gospel.

John was at first a disciple of John the Baptist.  He was the Apostle most loved by Jesus and an eyewitness to the events described in his Gospel.  John also wrote three Epistles and then the book of Revelation while exiled on the barren Isle of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.  After the death of the Roman emperor Domitian, John was allowed to return to Ephesus where he died at an advanced age.

In 180 AD, the so-called Muratorian Canon contained 22 New Testament books.

About 324 AD, Eusebius the Father of Church History determined that at least 20 books were worthy of inclusion in the New Testament canon.  The books of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were still under consideration because of authorship uncertainty.

Finally, in 367 AD, Athanasius the bishop of Alexandria listed as canonical the same 27 New Testament books that we have today.  That same Athanasius was the champion of the orthodox view when it was challenged about 325 AD.  He believed that Christ was coeternal, coequal, and consubstantial with God the Father, a belief for which he was exiled five times when he was a young man.

While some have thought the New Testament canon was a product of the Roman Catholic church, that was not the case.  About 170 AD, the church was calling itself the "catholic" or universal church.  The term was coined by Ignatius, an early church father who was arrested because of his Christian testimony and sent to Rome where he was killed by beasts in the imperial games.

According to historians, the Old Catholic Imperial church existed between 100 and 590 AD.  As that period ended, the Old Catholic Imperial church virtually became the Roman Catholic church.                         

Inspiration Incompatible With Error

Can faith in the Holy Scriptures be restored in the third millennium since the beginning of the Christian era?  Is it possible to re-establish the belief that the 39 traditional books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are inerrant in their original manuscripts as left by the hagiographers?

There are two schools of thought: those who believe the Bible is the word of God and those who believe the Bible contains the word of God.  The former believe that the sacred writers were inspired by Almighty God and that divine inspiration is incompatible with error.

Augustine was a Church Father who was revered by Catholics and Protestants alike.  If he came across an apparent discrepancy in Scripture, he didn't attribute it to the sacred writers.  Instead, he concluded that it was a copying error, a translation error, or that he himself had failed to understand the passage in question.

Augustine as quoted by Leo XIII:  "On my own part I confess to your charity that it is only to those books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honor and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error.  And if in these books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand."