If, as some linguists suggest, ancient Hebrew verbs did not have tenses as we know them, but described activities as either “done” or “in process,” then the 2 forms of prophecy are one. Both are utterances of the divine sent thru the person, describing –out loud or in writing–what is done and what is in process; no more, no less. Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah–each of them, all the way through to John the Baptist–”sees” and describes what is done and what is in process.

We know from both the epistles and the historical record that participants in the Early Church entered into ecstatic states and prophesied–and that such activities were understood to be gifts of the Holy Spirit to those who had entered into Communion through the re-enactment of the Last Supper.

Yet, since Latin and Greek have verb tenses of past, present, and future. that which is “seen” can be described as having been done, being done, about to be done, or possibly to be done at some distant time. Big difference from the Hebrew tradition. Then we have the further confusion that results from the fact that the Latin 2nd-person plural is written the same way as the imperative, command form–so all kinds of misunderstandings begin to emerge.

Prophecy, then, became a whole new experience, with a very different set of expectations. Now the prophet describes some hitherto unknown “future” as well as the deep-held secrets of hearts and souls. Now the prophet may have said “I command you to…” but be heard (or read) as “You (plural) will…” And if that which was “foretold” doesn’t happen as expected, then the prophecy (and all to often the prophet) is discredited.

What if Paul, speaking to 2 different communities, was addressing 2 different understandings of prophecy? In both cases, it’s a legitimate gift, but in the one that sees it as the same as “soothsaying” it’s not ok, but in the one that honors the divine utterance as a description of what is done and what is unfolding, it is.

Just a thought… and I’m fine if it’s too little too late in this conversation.

Theopneustos is translated as God breathed, which gets represented as inspired, which gets explained as inerrant. How did we get to inerrant from inspired, even? Typically if something inspires you, you have an idea, a sense, a motivation, but does inspired, in the usual sense of the word, mean perfection in the realization?

And while everyone seems to not challenge the tense as being present tense — is — it seems to me most assume the word is really in the past tense: the holy writings were inspired by God when the authors wrote them.

I am inclined to believe that the revelation provided via the prophets was indeed sufficient. As “Abraham” said to the rich man in the Lazarus parable, the brothers had the prophets and they ignored them, so they’d ignore someone from the dead as well. And the disciples did not recognize the resurrected Jesus on the road until He opened their eyes to Him. Thus the revelation is adequate; the reception is not. (Perhaps I’m being too picky; it wouldn’t be the first time.)

All of this brings me to holy writings are God-breathed: God *today* breathes into the words that we receive today — flawed and altered words sometimes — and we can see what God wants us to know. Yes, that opens up huge possibilities for sincere (and insincere, self-motivated, self-aggrandizing) error, I know. But it seems to fit with the fact that God is alive and active.

As you pointed out, there are several aspects of God’s process for developing things that account for some apparent contradictions. But there are types of inconsistancies that nothing accounts for. I think that the need to ignore these tell us more about ourselves than about God: why must I exalt a creation of God to the status of God? I am comfortable with applying the historical view of the creation to the Bible: it has an abundance of beauty to show that it was created by God, but enough flaws to show that it is just His creation, and not Him.

Does every detail of everything have to be factually accurate? Would God invest years in getting someone to the point where he could serve Him in an effective way, but scrap him because his sense of history is off, or he doesn’t know all the details, or some other trifling; simply because the record of his service would go in a book, that someday people would believe was accurate in every way?

I think we are assuming God had a surplus of people lined up, waiting to serve Him to choose from, to make this artificial standard of perfection possible. It seems the story of Jonah tells us quite the opposite: sometimes God was scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find someone to speak and act on His behalf. And, that is God’s own testimony about this salvation venture: I looked for a man to intercede on My behalf, but there was none. So My own right arm interceded for Me.

Even the apostle Paul tells us, on this side of the Cross, Resurrection & Holy Spirit Baptism: live in humilty, because we all see through a glass darkly. If this is true now, how much more so in pre-Christ Israel; when most of the Scriptures were written!

Absolutely Steve. My take is that we should always apply the Jesus filter.. especially to our theological musings.

To climb onto a hobby horse of mine, that you may remember from comments in the past, there is a lot of interpretation going on here, starting with the verse at the start as printed in our Bibles. The very use of the word “Scripture” in this verse is an interpretation by the translators of our English Bibles. (The decision to capitalize the “S” is an interpretation, too–the oldest NT manuscripts were written in all caps, with very little punctuation and no spaces between words.) I dug out my Greek NT and Analytical Greek Lexicon before starting this comment, and the Greek word literally means “a writing” and refers back to the “holy writings” (Scriptures”) mentioned in the previous verse. This use of the traditional “churchy” words goes all the way back to King James himself, who insisted that the scholars who worked on the KJV use them; he disliked the use of more literal words by Tyndale and some of the other English tranlators before the KJV. And of course, the verse divisions only go back to the mid-1500s; in “Pagan Christianity” Frank Viola and George Barna discuss the verse and chapter divisions and the harm caused by enabling “proof-texting” by taking verses out of context over the last four centuries. (Lately, in spite of my lifelong preference for the NASB, I’ve been reading “The Message” which does not have the verse divisions.)

On the Inerrancy and related issues: There are some minor problems with the Biblical text–very minor, especially considering it was copied by hand for over 1400 years, longer for the OT. There are some differences between the Hebrew text that survived to modern times and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other differences in the text used for the Greek Septuagint Version of the OT. The text experts have sorted the NT manuscripts into “families” based on which seemed to be copied from which older text, with regional variations in some. But the variations are minor (if all the disputed readings in the NT are collected together, it amounts to about a half a page out of the whole NT, with no major doctrine affected –unless you consider “snake handling” a major doctrine). The Hebrew OT is pretty good, too–there are a handful of words that even modern Jewish rabbis are no longer sure what they meant originally– but overall the transmission has been not perfect, but remarkably good. Better, in fact, than anything we have on Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar in terms of older manuscripts and number of copies.

I think the biggest problem is this: We’ve got people who are redeemed, but still fallen human beings, reading the Bible and interpreting it. And you’ll have to forgive me, but Paul nailed it in one “verse”– “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” All too often, our Biblical scholars, and an even larger number who are not any kind of scholar, get all “puffed up” about what they think they know about what some verse means. They start acting and talking as if their interpretations of the Bible are just as inspired and inerrant as the text itself. In fact, historically, most of the fighting among Christians is over interpretations, not the words of Scripture. What’s more, most of the fighting starts among the pastor class and their instructors in the seminaries–if ordinary Christians get involved they’re usually just parroting what they heard from some pastor! I have said before, and I’ll say it now: we need to hang on tightly to our humility when reading the Bible, and keep a solid distinction in our minds between the actual words of the Bible and what we think it means. Because when we get to the Other Side, we might found out that God does not agree with some of our interpretations–and we are not going to win any arguments with Him. Better to hold them a little lightly, in case we have to let go.

I have much to say and would love to converse privately, but for now I’ll limit myself to comments about this post of yours. I think your highlighting of Jesus’ “You have heard it said.” quote is great. Modern Western Christianity seems to be overrun by a legalistic/law-oriented OT Judeo interpretation of the scriptures, that they may as well have stuck with just the OT. Mercy, forgiveness, loving one’s enemies…all of that is absent. Instead there is just a warped sense of “justice”.

Marshall, your re-post is also excellent and worthwhile reading.

I left “institutional” Christianity several years ago but have always been keeping an eye out for a group of nearby believers who met my “litmus test”. Yes, my wording makes it sound like I’m being judgmental and looking for a brand of Christianity that did everything the way I thought was right, but I’m being honest here, and there were some serious flaws with the group I left. Without getting into details now, I felt like I was becoming more and more of a hypocrite as I “matured” there, and I knew that that was not how I should be growing as a Christian. Today, I long for a church which does not have a salaried pastor/evangelist “leader” (everyone seemed to be on equal footing in the early church, all money was shared, and elders were given respect because they had demonstrated that they earned it through their behavior and lifestyle, not because they were good/persuasive communicators. Money was shared among those who needed it, and for wealthier communities, was sent to poorer churches. Paul was funded by some widows when off and about preaching to a distant group of people who had never heard of Jesus…he did not receive an annual salary by the local Christians so that he could stay put for years and years.

In more recent years, the nationalistic USA-first (Jesus a distant 2nd) has been the other big “litmus test” for me. Everyone is on-board with “honoring” those “who serve”. I can’t get on board with that. I can’t even stomach it.

Well, now I’ve gotten thoroughly off-topic I’m sure, and I’m sorry for that. Like I said, I have much I’d like to share with you and I hope that I can do so. God bless you!

A friend turned me on to Beyond the Box about a couple weeks ago, gotta say I am really enjoying it! I don’t often reply to blogs, in fact I have done it only one other time but this just seemed like such a good fit I couldn’t pass it up.

The following is something I wrote a few months ago that I believe is heading in the same direction your blog was. Since I don’t know the politics of replying to blogs I (sheepishly) hope this isn’t too long.

John the Baptist boldly heralds the arrival of Jesus with an earth shattering statement. In the face of all the great scholars of his time, In the face of the Sadducee’s and Pharisees unsurpassed knowledge of scripture the Baptist rips apart their theology in one sentence…

John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

Have we overlooked the significance of this proclamation? The Greek word for “seen” in the above verse means; (to know by experience, to perceive or to be acquainted with). John the Baptist just dropped an atom bomb! He flat out told those that memorized the first five books of the Bible that they did NOT know God!

For the first seventeen verses of Chapter One the apostle John gives us a history lesson, a mini Bible as he sees it. Then he finishes with a quote from John the Baptist, “No man has seen (to know by experience, to perceive or to be acquainted with) God”. John is telling us that up until this point in history no one really knew God. Jesus His Son had arrived to declare and reveal the Father’s true nature to mankind. When John the Baptist said NO ONE knew God, did he mean it? Was John “inspired” by God when he said it? When John said NO ONE had a clear picture of who God was, wouldn’t that include the Old Testament writers? If this were just one isolated verse we could possibly explain it away or symbolize it but the problem is it’s not an isolated verse, it is repeated over and over by Jesus himself.

John 5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.

John the Baptist proclaims to the world that NO ONE knew God before Jesus and here we see Jesus confirming John’s message. NO ONE had fully and completely heard or seen God before Jesus Christ

John 17:25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. 26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Whenever the word “name” is used in Hebrew it simply means nature or character. So when Jesus says; I will declare your name, He is saying I will declare (who you are). The fall had so blinded us and so twisted our nature that it was impossible to see God clearly. Jesus is the light that came to help us see God for who He truly is. “The world has not known you, but I have and I will declare to them who you are!”

John 8:19 Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered; Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

If you know Me, you would know the Father. Or we could flip this around and say if you don’t know Jesus you don’t really know the Father. Did the Old Testament writers know Jesus as well as a born again believer? Jesus Himself said that the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than the greatest Old Testament prophet. – Selah

Mark 12:24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?

Was Jesus actually saying that they didn’t know the scriptures? Most scholars agree and Jesus knew that this group of people did know the scriptures from mans point of view. But once again He was telling them they didn’t really see, they still believed the lie and thus remained behind a veil.

John 6:46 Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.

What will it take before Christians agree with Jesus and simply say that NO ONE really knew God before He showed up? Is it possible we have let the writers of the Old Testament actually trump what Jesus said?

John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life

Have we as New Testament believers become like the Pharisees and Sadducees? Will we remain behind a veil that Christ Himself removed? Will we give as much weight to the Old Testament writers as we do to Jesus Himself?

Over and over we are told no one really knew God, no one saw Gods true nature. Jesus was here to clear that up, the express image telling us that if we have seen Him we have seen the Father. Jesus was here to tell us He didn’t do or say anything He didn’t see the Father do. The Word, God in flesh was here to say; look at Me, I’m it. I am what you have been looking for in the scriptures. I am here in bodily form to show you exactly what I am like. All things written before, all things seen before are just shadows; you did not see me clearly. Here, I AM.

I have no problem with you or anyone disagreeing with what I wrote here. I’m not entirely sure what you mean about me being right even if you disagree. Regarding cogent argument, please do keep in mind that one of my degrees is a B.S. degree (a B.S. in Bible, no less!!)