On the Epistles of John, Part 2: The Propitiation for Sin

In our opening presentation in this commentary, discussing 1 John chapter 1, we saw the apostle repeat particular themes from his Gospel in relation to the nature of Christ, that, among other things, He is the Word of Life, and He is the true Light come into the World. Doing that, we used an accompanying illustration which seeks to describe the various ways in which Yahweh, the Invisible God, chose to manifest Himself in the world. Among these are the burning in the bush which appeared to Moses, the pillars of cloud and fire which led the Israelites out of Egypt, the Rock in the desert, and finally, as the man Yahshua Christ, who is also the Son. Sadly, there are trinitarians who also call themselves Christian Identity, but who do not realize that the concept of the trinity is contrary to the truth of God.

It is not that Yahweh God became or made Himself into a pillar of smoke or a pillar of fire, but that He used the pillars of smoke and fire as signs indicating that He was present with the children of Israel to lead them out of Egypt. So from the perspective of man, we read in Exodus chapter 13 that “21… the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:” Likewise, in Exodus chapter 3, while the burning in the bush was initially called an “angel”, an angel is only a messenger, and an angel does not have to be a sentient being, as even the elements of Creation may be used by God to send a message. So after Moses wrote that “the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire”, as it is in the King James Version, in that same place we then read: “4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.” It was not an angel who spoke to Moses, but Yahweh God Himself, described as being in the flames in the bush. Therefore the flames themselves were the angel, as they were employed to attract the attention of Moses and to represent to presence of the Invisible God. Perhaps trinitarians may imagine Moses to have been speaking to a man with wings and a white garment sitting in the flames in a bush, but that is not what the Scripture implies.

See the full article for the opening notes to this presentation.

On the Epistles of John, Part 1: Light and the Word of Life

Now, turning our attention to the first epistle of John, for our translation we have either followed or considered the readings of the 4th century Codices Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), the 5th century Codices Alexandrinus (A), Ephraemi Syri (C) and Vaticanus Graecus 2061 (048), and the 6th century Codices known only as Uncial 0245 and Uncial 0296, all of them as they are presented in the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. Additionally, there is one ancient papyrus that was also considered, which is known as P9 in the Nestle-Aland editions. In this papyrus are preserved fragments of several verses of 1 John chapter 4, and it is esteemed to date to the 3rd century. The earliest surviving witness to any of the text of 1 John may be the Muratorian Fragment, or Canon, which dates to approximately 170 AD and which cites the opening three verses of this epistle.

As I have said in the past, while we possess a copy of the 28th edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece, which was first published in 2012, I have not yet had the opportunity to compare its Greek text and critical notes to these translations. Our translation and notes are based on the 27th edition, which was first published in 1993. The 28th edition does add 29 recently discovered papyri to the catalog of 98 New Testament papyri fragments from which readings were included in the 27th edition. But none of the newly added papyri fragments contain any portion of the epistles of John.

Among the early Christian writers, 1 John is mentioned in the surviving fragments of Papias, a bishop of Hierapolis who died about 130 AD. So Papias attests to 1 John only decades after it was written. Both Clement of Alexandria, who died circa 215 AD, and Origen who died perhaps 23 years later, had written commentaries on the epistles of John. In his commentary, Clement expressly considered the John of the Gospel to have been the same John to whom the epistles are attributed. Origen also mentioned or cited 1 John in both his de Principiis and his commentary on Matthew. 1 John is mentioned frequently in Cyprian's Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews. Cyprian was a bishop of Roman Carthage in the first half of the 3rd century. So far as we have seen, authorship of the epistles is not disputed in any of these writings.

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 30: Requiem for the Wicked

While this last presentation in our commentary On the Wisdom of Solomon is titled Requiem for the Wicked, we certainly are not going to sing dirges for bastards. However we are compelled to illustrate the overarching theme in this Wisdom of Solomon which was purposely designed to impart an essential lesson, a lesson which in itself also contains many smaller lessons. Solomon’s intention here has not been to ramble on about unrelated subjects, where he may appear to have forsaken his first comparisons of the wicked and the righteous and had randomly changed to a discussion of the beginnings of idolatry and its consequences, and then again to a discussion of the Exodus account while presenting the initial prayer in which he had supplicated Yahweh for wisdom. Rather, his prayer illustrates what true wisdom is, which is the fear and the knowledge of God, and culminates by comparing the destinies of two nations, one of them wicked and one of them righteous, at least, in the eyes of God. In the end what is righteous is what Yahweh considers righteous, and not what men consider righteous.

As we read in the 111th Psalm, “10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.” This is the lesson which Solomon conveys throughout this work, while making illustrations of the motives, methods and folly of all of those who depart from it. Therefore all of the changes of course throughout this work were calculated, and all of the themes which he presented here are woven together into a single cohesive lesson. However for reason of its length, for the many analogies which it contains, and for its frequent turns of course, the overarching lesson may be easily overlooked by casual readers. But clearly, by enveloping this work with discourses concerning the beginnings and the ends of the wicked, we see that the Exodus account has been set forth here as an example for both men and nations, that the ungodly, or impious, put themselves on a path to destruction, that wicked men who desire to rule by their own strength become unrighteous rulers, and they ultimately bring entire nations down that same destructive path, where in the end, the righteous will escape their destruction only by the grace of God, as the righteous are in the hand of God whether they themselves realize it or not.

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 29: Born From Above

In the last portion of this commentary, throughout chapter 18 of the Wisdom of Solomon, we saw a description of The Emergent World, as Solomon himself had described the world as being represented by the long garment of the high priest of Israel which had contained twelve gemstones representing each of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. The breastplate of the garment contained little else besides those gemstones and the Urim and Thummim, which ostensibly represented the twelve tribes under the judgment and counsel of Yahweh their God. Yet Solomon described that as “the whole world” where he said in verse 24: “For in the long garment was the whole world, and in the four rows of the stones was the glory of the fathers graven, and thy Majesty upon the diadem of his head.” This world, referring to the particular κόσμος or society and not to the entire planet, was formed by God Himself as He chose the children of Israel, the seed of Abraham, to endure the trials which they had experienced in Egypt, and coming out of Egypt to be established in His laws and to be organized according to His Word. Solomon will repeat that same profession in another way here in Wisdom chapter 19, whereby he also reveals the meaning of the phrase “born from above”.

In Genesis chapter 15, Abraham was forewarned of this by God, where after Yahweh God had made many other promises to him, we read “13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.” The four hundred years, as it had been reckoned by Paul of Tarsus and as it is evident in the historical narrative of Scripture, included the time from Abraham’s arrival in Canaan to the subsequent sojourn of Jacob in Egypt and the period during which the Israelites were actually enslaved by the Egyptians, which was only something less than 180 years. This method of counting is verified where in verse 16 of that same chapter of Genesis, it says that “in the fourth generation they shall come hither again”, and in the genealogies it is evident that when Jacob went to Egypt with Levi, his son Kohath was already born, and Kohath was the father of Amram, the father of Moses. So Moses was the fourth generation from Jacob, and although several generations were born after him, he led them back “hither” to the land of Canaan.