| To them He presented Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the Kingdom of God (Acts 1.3). It should be noted that the time span of forty days is used many times in the Bible and signifies a temporal period of completeness and sufficiency ( Gen 7.17 ; Ex 16.35, 24.18 ; Judg 3.11 ; 1Sam 17.16; 1 Kg 19.8; Jon 3.4; Mt 4.2 ). On the fortieth day after His passover, Jesus ascended into heaven to be glorified on the right hand of God (Acts 1.9–11; Mk 16.19 ; Lk?24.51). The ascension of Christ is His final physical departure from this world after the resurrection. It is the formal completion of His mission in this world as the Messianic Saviour. It is His glorious return to the Father Who had sent Him into the world to accomplish the work that He had given him to do ( Jn 17.4–5 ). .?.?. and lifting His hands He blessed them. While blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy ( Lk 24.51–52 ). The Church’s celebration of the ascension, as all such festal celebrations, is not merely the remembrance of an event in Christ’s life. Indeed, the ascension itself is not to be understood as though it were simply the supernatural event of a man floating up and away into the skies. The holy scripture stresses Christ’s physical departure and His glorification with God the Father, together with the great joy which His disciples had as they received the promise of the Holy Spirit Who was to come to assure the Lord’s presence with them, enabling them to be His witnesses to the ends of earth ( Lk 24.48–53 ; Acts 1.8–11; Mt 28.20 ; Mk 16.16–14 ). In the Church the believers in Christ celebrate these very same realities with the conviction that it is for them and for all men that Christ’s departure from this world has taken place. The Lord leaves in order to be glorified with God the Father and to glorify us with himself. He goes in order to “prepare a place” for and to take us also into the blessedness of God’s presence. He goes to open the way for all flesh into the “heavenly sanctuary .?.?. the Holy Place not made by hands” (see Hebrews 8–10). He goes in order send the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father to bear witness to Him and His gospel in the world, making Him powerfully present in the lives of disciples. |
| The entry containing the record of the July 15, 588 BCE eclipse (obverse, lines 1618) is dated to year 17, not year 57, of Nebuchadnezzar! This entry reports two lunar eclipses in this year, one “omitted” and one observed. The first, “omitted” one, which refers to the eclipse of July 15, 588, is dated to month IVnot to month III (Simanu). So it cannot be the eclipse dated to month III on VAT 4956. That this eclipse really is the one of July 15, 588 is confirmed by the detailed information given about the second, observed lunar eclipse, which is dated to month X (Tebetu) of year 17. The details about the time and the magnitude help to identify this eclipse beyond all reasonable doubts. The whole entry reads according to H. Hunger’s translation in ADT V, page 29: “[Year] 17, Month IV, [omitted.] [Month] X, the 13 th , morning watch, 1 beru 5° [before sunrise ? ] All of it was covered. [It set eclips]ed.” The second eclipse in month X – six months after the first – took place on January 8, 587 BCE. This date, therefore, corresponded to the 13 th of month X in the Babylonian calendar. This agrees with Parker & Dubberstein’s tables, which show that the 1 st of month X (Tebetu) fell on 26/27 December in 588 BCE. The Babylonians divided the 24hour day into 12 beru or 360 USH (degrees), so one beru was two hours and 5 USH (=degrees of four minutes each) were 20 minutes. According to the tablet, then, this eclipse began 2 hours and 20 minutes before sunrise. It was total (“All of it was covered”), and it “[set eclips]ed,” i.e., it ended after moonset. What do modern computations of this eclipse show? My astroprogram shows that the eclipse of January 8, 587 BCE began “in the morning watch” at 04:51, and that sunrise occurred at 07:12. The eclipse, then, began 2 hours and 21 minutes before sunrise – exactly as the tablet says. The difference of one minute is not real, as the USH (time degree of 4 minutes) is the shortest time unit used in this text. [The USH was not the shortest time unit of the Babylonians, of course, as they also divided the USH into 12 “fingers” of 20 seconds each.] The totality began at 05:53 and ended at 07:38. As moonset occurred at 07:17 according to my program, the eclipse was still total at moonset. Thus the moon “set while eclipsed.” |
| On the Saints of the Old Testament St. Gregory Palamas Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. David indicates that our Lord Jesus Christ has no genealogy with regard to His divinity (Ps. 110:4), Isaiah says the same (Isa. 53:8), and later so does the apostle (Heb. 7:3). How can the descent be traced of Him “who is in the beginning, and is with God, and is God, and is the Word and Son of God” (cf. Jn. 1:1-2, 18)? He does not have a Father who was before Him, and shares with His Father “a name which is above every name” and all speech (Phil. 2:9). For the most part, genealogies are traced back through different surnames; but there is no surname for God (cf. Gen. 32:29), and whatever may be said of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they are one and do not differ in any respect. Impossible to recount is Christ’s descent according to His divinity, but His ancestry according to His human nature can be traced, since He who deigned to become Son of Man in order to save mankind was the offspring of men. And it is this genealogy of His that two of the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, recorded. But although Matthew, in the passage from his Gospel read today, begins with those born first, he makes no mention of anyone born before Abraham He traces the line down from Abraham until he reaches Joseph to whom, by divine dispensation, the Virgin Mother of God was betrothed (Matt. 1:1-16), being of the same tribe and homeland as him, that her own stock may be shown from this to be in no way inferior. Luke, by contrast, begins not with the earliest forebears but the most recent, and working his way back from Joseph the Betrothed, does not stop at Abraham, nor, having included Abraham’s predecessors, does he end with Adam, but lists God among Christ’s human forebears (Lk. 3:23-38); wishing to show, in my opinion, that from the beginning man was not just a creation of God, but also a son in the Spirit, which was given to him at the same time as his soul, through God’s quickening breath (Gen. 2:7). It was granted to him as a pledge that, if, waiting patiently for it, he kept the commandment, he would be able to share through the same Spirit in a more perfect union with God, by which he would live forever with Him and obtain immortality. |
| She said nothing. But Jesus, who took the initiative, knew her heart. The Lord called to her and said, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” He touched her with His holy hands and He healed her. She had been sick for eighteen years but now, amazingly, she was able to straighten herself up, giving thanks to God. Christ came to the world not only to save and to teach, but also to heal and comfort. A prophecy in the book of Isaiah foretold the blessings of the Messiah this way: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases” (Isaiah 53:4; Mat. 8:17). Christ lifts the burdens of our bodies and souls, uplifting us up, and strengthening us to walk with courage and freedom. Our society is in a bit of a mess. We live in difficult and confusing times. A new variant of the epidemic threatens health. Economic inflation is worrisome to say the least. Shootings and other forms of violence never seem to cease. And many of us deal with personal and family issues of one kind or another. Metaphorically, we resemble the woman of today’s Gospel, needing healing and relief. Our backs are weighed down and pressed to the ground by burdens and worries. It is a good thing to turn to Christ, the carrier of burdens, and to remember His words: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mat. 11:28-30). Is Christ’s yoke truly easy and His burden really light? How can that be so when, in doing good and speaking the truth, Christ was persecuted, reviled, and at the end crucified? And yet that is the paradox of His life, beginning with His birth and the meaning of Christmas itself. Because what makes Christ’s yoke easy and His burden light is the power of divine love by which He lifts our fears and our worries. To the degree we believe in Christ and abide by His love, our fears are relieved, our worries are diminished, life begins to shine with joy. Here we discover the meaning of Christmas, the invincible message of love, freedom from fear, hope of peace, a life of joy among humans. St. John the Evangelist proclaims the eternal message of Christmas when he writes, “All things were created through [Christ]; in Him was life, and the life was the light of humans. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it . . . All who received Him, who believed in His Name, He gave power to become children of God . . . The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:2-4, 14). |
| To subdue our thought, Saint John Chrysostom also instructs us “to prepare our thought” so that we “look at our enemies in a way that is tame,” ( Homily 10 on Genesis, PG 53.93) which implies being ready to cooperate with them rather than struggle with them, being flexible around them rather than rigid, being gentle and meek, rather than callous and authoritarian. It means opening our hearts to them by opening our thoughts to the expansive love of Christ from which nothing can separate us, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature” ( Romans 8:38-39), unless we separate ourselves from Him by choosing not to love our enemies. Saint Ephraim the Syrian teaches that loving those who love you, the love of the publicans, is the love of the dinner table to which friends are invited, but not enemies. For the Saint, to think of such love as though it were the love of Christ is pure delusion. The love Christians seek is “without hypocrisy, without blame, without moral stain, and without comparison. It bears all things and leads to every good thing. The Lord showed it to us, saying, ‘that one lay down his life for his friends,’ for the Lord taught this and did this, laying down his own soul not only for His friends, but also for His enemies. Indeed, God so loved the world that He gave His beloved Son for us. Regarding this love, the Apostle Paul full of divine love said: love does no ill to the neighbor, does not render evil for evil, insult for insult, but is always slow to anger, is always kind, is not jealous, is not irritable, does not take into account wrong doings, does not rejoice in injustice, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Such love never fails” (Saint Ephraim the Syrian, On love, volume 5 of the collected works). Hieromonk Alexis (Trader) 30 ноября 2014 г. Подпишитесь на рассылку Православие.Ru |
| group, the Theotokos and the disciples represent the Church. 4. The Theotokos amongst the Angels and Apostles The icon of the Ascension includes some who did not witness the Ascension. St. Paul is shown to the left of the Theotokos, but we know that he was not present at the Ascension 6. At that time, St. Paul did not yet believe in Jesus. But he became a Christian and one of the greatest Apostles and missionaries of Church. 5. The Theotokos (detail). 6. Saint Paul, who did not witness Christ’s Ascension, is depicted in the icon (detail). The icon expresses the sovereignty of Christ over His Church; He is its Head, its guide, its source of inspiration and teaching; it receives its commission and ministry from Him, and fulfils it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Orthodox Christian Celebration of the Feast of the Ascension This Feast of our Lord is celebrated with the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, which is conducted on the day of the Feast and preceded by the Matins service. A Great Vespers is conducted on the evening before the day of the Feast. Scripture readings for the Feast are the following: At Vespers: Isaiah 2:2-3 , 62:10-63:9 ; Zechariah 14:1,4,8-11 . At the Orthros (Matins) Mark 16:9-20 ; At the Divine Liturgy: Acts 1:1-12 ; Luke 24:36-53 . Hymns of the Feast Apolytikion (Fourth Tone) O Christ our God, You ascended in Glory and gladdened Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Your blessing assured them that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world. Kontakion (Plagal of the Second Tone) O Christ our God, upon fulfilling Your dispensation for our sake, You ascended in Glory, uniting the earthly with the heavenly. You were never separate but remained inseparable, and cried out to those who love You, “I am with you and no one is against you.” Tweet Donate Share Code for blog The Ascension of our Lord admin The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ is celebrated each year on the fortieth day after the Great ... |
| 7. Unless I go through all this and destroy the heathen within me, I cannot go into the sanctuary of God 41 and rest, nor become a partaker of the glory of the King. Therefore labor to become a child of God without fault, and to enter into that rest , 42 whither the forerunner is for us entered , even Christ. 43 Labor to be enrolled in the church in heaven with the firstborn 44 that you may be found at the right hand of the majesty 45 of the Most High. Labor to enter into the holy city, the Jerusalem that is at peace, that is above, above all, where also is Paradise. You have no other way to be admitted to these wonderful and blessed types, unless you pour out tears day and night, like him who says, Every night wash I my bed, and water my couch with my tears . 46 You know well that they that sow in tears shall reap in joy . 47 The prophet says boldly, Hold not Thy peace at my tears ; 48 and again, Put my tears into Thy bottle; are not these things noted in Thy book? 49 and, My tears have been my meat day and night ; 50 and in another psalm, I have mingled my drink with weeping . 51 8. For the tear that is really shed out of much affliction and anguish of heart 52 in the knowledge of the truth, with burning of the inward parts, is indeed a food of the soul, supplied from the heavenly bread, of which Mary preeminently partook, when she sat at the feet of the Lord and wept, after the testimony of the Savior Himself. He says, Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her . 53 O those precious pearls in the flow of blessed tears! O that immediate and ready hearing! What a strong, wise mind! What keen love of the Spirit of the Lord, moving vehemently towards the unsullied Bridegroom! What a sting of desire in the soul for God the Word! What swift communion of the bride with the heavenly Bridegroom! 9. Imitate her then, my child; imitate her whose eyes were fixed upon nothing but Him only, who said, I am come to send fire upon the earth, and I would that it were already kindled 54 There is indeed a burning of the Spirit, which burns hearts into flame. The immaterial divine fire his the effect of enlightening souls and trying them, like unalloyed gold in the furnace, but of consuming iniquity, like thorns or stubble; for our God is a consuming fire , 55 taking vengeance on them that know Him not in flaming fire, and on them that obey not His gospel . 56 It was this fire that worked in the apostles, when they spoke with fiery tongues. It was this fire which shone by the voice round St. Paul, enlightening his mind, but blinding his sense of sight; for not without the flesh did he see the power of that light. It was this fire which appeared to Moses in the bush. This fire, in the shape of a chariot, caught up Elias from the earth. The blessed David was seeking the operation of this fire when he said, Examine me, Lord, and prove me: try out my reins and my heart . 57 |
| Käsemann is certainly wrong to regard John as docetic, 3603 as scholars today usually recognize. 3604 John states the enfleshment specifically, and the verb indicates the enfleshment of his whole being, not a temporary or partial adoption of it as an envelope or covering 3605 (cf. also other hints, e.g., in 4:6; 18:37). At the same time, John does not dwell on it; his consistent theme in the prologue is not the Word " s enfleshment, but rather that the Word is deity. In other words, he does not expend space here on polemic against non-Jewish views of matter, but assuming a Jewish view of creation emphasizes instead that the Jesus of history is deity. (That the author or, on other views, a later author within this author " s circle, had to combat such a view in 1 John 4is possible, though the established language of Christian tradition does not demand that interpretation–cf. Rom 1:3; 8:3; 9:5 ; 1Tim 3:16 .) Even some Palestinian Jewish texts could speak of God identifying with humanity to make them understand him 3606 or coming down to humanity " s level to vindicate his servants» decrees, 3607 and sometimes even used the anthropomorphic circumlocution «man» to describe God, 3608 as had some of their Hellenistic Jewish predecessors. 3609 Despite some opposition, 3610 anthropomorphic pictures of God became standard in the rabbinic movement. 3611 But most of Judaism would have rejected any idea like God becoming flesh; by the early second century, in fact, some Jewish teachers found it necessary to polemicize against the idea. 3612 Again, John s polemic is to stress that the Jesus of his followers is the divine Torah of Judaism, not to argue the nature of divine transcendence. «Flesh» indicates Christ " s humanity (1:13; 3:6) and his solidarity with all humanity (e.g., 17:2; a Semitic idiom, e.g., Ps 145:21 ; Jer 32:27 ); it is valueless in itself for perceiving truth (3:6; 6:63; 8:15), but it is only in his flesh–his sharing human mortality–that people may be saved (6:51, 53,54, 55, 56). |
| The artificial conception of a human being, if it is ever achieved, will by no means imply freedom as regards the constitutive mode of the human hypostasis. Instead it will imply the henceforth unfree replacement of nature and its laws with the laws of human reason. 50 I stress the word “finally” because this is of vital importance in Christology. All things in Christology are judged in the light of the resurrection. The incarnation in itself does not constitute a guarantee of salvation. The fact that finally death is conquered gives us the right to believe that the conqueror of death was also originally God. This is the way in which Christology in the New Testament has developed – from the resurrection to the incarnation, not the other way round – and patristic theology has never lost this eschatological approach to Christology. Consequently, when we say that Christ escaped the necessity and the “passions” of nature, we do not imply that He remained a stranger to the conditions of biological existence (for example, He suffered the supreme passion of the biological hypostasis, the passion of death). But the fact that He rose from the dead rendered this passion “without hypostasis”: the real hypostasis of Christ was proved to be not the biological one, but the eschatological or trinitarian hypostasis. 51 The structure of the sacrament of baptism was identified at the outset with the structure of the evangelical narrative of the baptism of Jesus. The words, “this is my beloved [or: only-begotten] Son in whom I am well pleased,” uttered by the Father with reference to the Son of the Trinity in the presence of the Spirit, are pronounced at baptism with reference to the person being baptized. In this way the structure of the Trinity is made the structure of the hypostasis of the person being baptized, a fact which makes Paul summarize the sense of baptism with the phrase, “Spirit of adoption, in which we cry Abba, Father” ( Rom. 8:15 ). 53 “You are all brethren; and call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matt. 23:8,9). Cf. Matt, 4:21; 10:25,27; 19:29 and parallel texts, especially Luke l4:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life…” that is, the whole network of relations that constitutes the biological hypostasis. |
| The traditional text of the Greek New Testament is the text that the Church has actually used and preserved for the past 2,000 years, and is to be found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and is reflected in the vast majority of ancient translations of the New Testament–which in some cases originate from the time of the Apostles. The critical editions are based primarily on a small number of manuscripts from Egypt, the earliest of which date from the mid-fourth century, as well as some of the papyri that likewise come from Egypt, some of which are dated as early as the second or third century. The supporting premises of the theory that is behind the critical editions of the Greek New Testament have largely been shot to pieces by subsequent scholarship, but nevertheless, the theory remains the dominate approach to New Testament textual criticism because nothing has come along to replace it that has satisfied the majority of Protestant scholars. 2 Consequently, almost all modern translations of the New Testament are based on the critical editions of the Greek New Testament rather than the traditional text. The exceptions are of course the King James Version (along with various revised editions of the King James which are not really new translations but simply attempts to update the English of the KJV), the New King James Version (which really is a new Translation, although it makes an attempt to maintain some continuity with the original King James Version), the Douay-Rheims, and a few other minor translations that are not in common use. But are the differences between these two versions of the Greek New Testament significant? I have often answered this question by asking the proud owner of a translation based on the revised Greek text to look up John 5:4 and read it to me. It is always fun to watch as they discover that their Bible skips from verse 3 to verse 5. If you read this passage in context, removing verse 4 makes it entirely unclear what the paralytic is doing by the pool of Bethesda to begin with. Had the editors of the revised versions the guts to do it, you would also not find Father, forgive them for they know not what they do (Luke 23:43), or the story of the woman caught in adultery ( John 7:53–8:11 ), but since they dared not remove those texts, you simply find them in brackets, with footnotes that tell you that “the earliest and most reliable manuscripts” do not contain them. In fact, if we accepted the assumptions of the revised Greek text, when the third Matins Gospel Mark 16:9–20 is appointed, the priest would just have to whistle Dixie, because there would be no third Matins Gospel. |
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