Hot answers tagged matthew
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A little bit of Friday, Saturday and a little bit of Sunday could be properly describe as three days and nights in Biblical language. We think of days as 24 hour periods but they included in their common expressions a 'day' as 'any part of a day, or 'touching any part of a calendar day'. The term 'three days and three nights' was a Jewish expression that ...
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The Hebrew for the phrase is:
וְרֹכֵב עַל-חֲמוֹר, וְעַל-עַיִר בֶּן-אֲתֹנוֹת.
NJPS translates this as:
and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass.
Some translations have "an ass and a colt". The Hebrew isn't clear about the number of animals.
The word גַּם means "also" in biblical Hebrew. We see it, for example, in Genesis 33, ...
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I. Howard Marshall gives a concise statement of the options for harmonization in his commentary:
It is quite possible that Matthew or Luke is simply reporting what was commonly said in Jerusalem, and that we are not meant to harmonize the two accounts. If we do try to harmonzie (sic) them, the following possibilities arise: (1). Judas hanged himself ...
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Theophilus was the Patriarch and seventh bishop of Antioch; he died in approximately 181-185 A.D. The Greek text below is from the third book, thirteenth chapter (Book III, Ch. XIII) of his apologia (defense) to Autolycus, who himself was a Pagan friend of Theophilus. An English translation by Philip Schaff is available at the Christian Classics Ethereal ...
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I'm surprised no one mentioned Matthew 26:25! It's the same chapter:
And Judas, who was betraying Him, said, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” Jesus said to him, “ You have said it yourself.” (KJV)
No one questions what Jesus meant here, do they? Same exact phrase is used. There is no question that Jesus's answer is an affirmation, just as in verse 64 He ...
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The ambiguity comes from a difference between the Hebrew Old Testament and the Septuagint (a Greek translation). Jesus is teaching to forgive by reversing the statement of Lamech in Genesis 4.
Gen 4:24 "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold." (NASB)
The NASB follows the Hebrew which has שִׁבְעִים וְשִׁבְעָֽה (shib'iym wshib'ah), ...
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Your parish priest has it right. The usage of the word "satan" (שטן) has evolved over time and several different usages were used concurrently. There is a good summary of the evolution of the usage on Bethelbooks.com.
With a bit of simplification we can say that there are three phases in the evolution of the usage:
Pre-exilic
Post-exilic
Post-OT
In the ...
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The Greek phrase translated here as “Jesus answered and said” is (in Textus Receptus) a combination of “ἀποκριθεὶς” ("answering") and “εἶπεν” ("said") separated by “ὁ Ἰησοῦς” ("Jesus"), so together it is “ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν” ("answering Jesus said").
There are quite a few places with “ἀποκριθεὶς” and “εἶπεν”, in which the speaker is not answering ...
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Tithing was an institute of the Mosaic Law and consisted of agricultural produce and reared livestock (Lv 27:30-33). The Israelites offered the tithe to the landless Levites who in turn offered a tenth of the tithe to the Aaronic priesthood (Nm 18:26-28). Unlike the other tribes, the Levites were denied any inheritance or land ownership in Israel. They were, ...
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Some say the "Kingdom of Heaven" refers to the a physical/political kingdom on earth while the "Kingdom of God" is the spiritual, coming reign of Christ.
Arguments against the two being the same often come down to hair splitting and misinterpretation of verses. For example, the site listed above relies on a single verse in an attempt to say they are ...
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The Hebrew word שמיים (shamayim), which is translated into English, is what is known in Judaism as a כנוי (kinnui), or a "substitute," "nickname."
The reason why Matthew uses "kingdom of Heaven" more often than "kingdom of God" is because he wrote to a Jewish audience, and the Jews did not pronounce the Tetragrammaton יהוה, and sometimes not even the word ...
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The immediate context is adultery, which occurs in the heart. The adultery enters the heart through the eye, and clears the heart through the hand. Under these circumstances, one would be ceremonially unclean only until evening (Lev 15:16-17). That is, there was no sin under these circumstances in the Law of Moses that would have required blood sacrifice ...
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The usage of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15 is consistent with the "drash" reading of scripture that was accepted among the dominant Pharisaic Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus.
See this explanation of "drash" and its relationship to context in the Wikipedia article on "pshat" [emphasis is mine]:
Definitions of Peshat also note the importance of ...
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Wikipedia is helpful here;
much of this answer is adapted from there.
The Hebrew satan [שטן] means to oppose or obstruct,
more actively than to simply be a stumbling block.
In Job and Zechariah, though,
mention is made of a particular celestial being identified as ha-satan [השטן]
with the definite article ha-;
so, “the satan” or “the adversary”.
This ...
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I don't think Reformed theology or any other tradition really bears on this issue so much as simple hermeneutics. Jesus spoke using many traits of ordinary language , and forcing an interpretation on the passage that does not take into account the ordinary ways that language is used and people communicate ideas only leaves people with twisted conclusions.
...
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Poor in spirit means that you feel you have no moral riches and are in need. You feel you need 'spiritual' life. 'Poor' (πτωχός) used in this verse means 'reduced to being a beggar'. This makes sense and we can confirm its meaning by comparing other statements of Jesus, for he often said the same things in many ways.
One good match that seems to bring ...
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Satan (שָׂטָן) in Hebrew means “enemy” or “adversary” but this “opposition” is in the Old Testament directed in the specific sense of an “accuser”. The idea seems to be that since man has fallen into sin under the curse of Law, the Devil appeals to God’s own justice in order to accuse men and keep them under his domain of death. He is a kind of 'receiver ...
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I am not an expert on Christian scriptures and history, but discussion on other answers on this question led me to enough information to propose an answer.
One approach is to count partial days, so "three days and three nights" is understood as "three days, including the nights". If we understand Jesus' death to have been on Friday (the dominant opinion to ...
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According to the Majority Text footnotes1 cited in Mark, the word for dog that Jesus used was a diminutive form of the derogatory word dog Jews used for Gentiles who were considered to be unclean. Here the word (kynarion) means "little dog" (a house pet) or puppy, such as would beg food from children.
The kind of pesky, wild, loathsome dogs (probably like ...
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Circumlocution is an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech. For example, instead of saying ‘Throw that in the trash bin’, one might say, ‘Throw that it in the oblong somewhat cone shaped silver container with a beveled lip'.
It seems to indicate an intentional avoidance of using the simple word and indicating that the Jewish Sabbath is no longer a valid ...
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Why is the “give to Caesar what is Caesar's” answer so great?
Why is that an answer that "amazed" them?
You are making the interpretation that Jesus' answer was great: the text does say that the Pharisees who tried to 'trap' or 'entangle' Jesus 'were amazed' or 'marvelled'1 but the text does not spell out the reason why.
Other's here understand the ...
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If we are to think like the first-century hearers, we must recognize that the importance of the number fourteen is that it is a multiple of (that ever-so-important number) seven. Matthew is implying that the entire flow of God's history of creating a people for himself shows that Jesus the Christ is our Sabbath rest.
Forty-two, not Fourteen
Three sets of ...
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The name Barabbas is clearly a patronymic (bar-Abbas or "son of the father") rather than a given name. As it turns out, a handful of manuscripts provide another name for that individual: Jesus. As the NET Bible points out:
Although the external evidence for the inclusion of “Jesus” before “Barabbas” (in vv. 16 and 17) is rather sparse, being restricted ...
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Actually, I don't know of any Christian denomination or individual that tithes according to the Torah of Moshe. Tithing (עישור) is a relatively complicated process in Judaism, and of course, it's hardly (if at all) practical without a Temple. If Jews cannot tithe without the Temple, then Christians certainly cannot.
With that being said, the general concept ...
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The context of this passage, as shown in 10:32-33, is to confess God before men, indicating that our fear of man should not stop of us from acknowledging him before others. Notice the contrast between fearing those who kill the body (plural) versus the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna (singular). There are many who can kill the body, but ...
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This leaves a strong of impression of parallelism similar to such in Old Testament, and perhaps on even bigger scale - there are not two parallels as usual, but eight.
What you are describing is referred to as External Parallelism, when correspondance exists between bicola (as well as within them). This kind of parallelism is not unique to the New ...
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Other gospels simplified
If you accept Matthean priority, the question becomes, "Why did Mark and Luke halve people?" It's even simpler than that since Luke usually prefers Mark's text. Robert Dean Luginbill (author and curator of Ichthys.com) argues:
There were two, so Matthew gives two. But the fact of "two" raises questions which a concentration on ...
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In exegesis: Matthew writes to a Jewish mindset and answers unwritten questions in regard to the widely anticipated coming kingdom of God. Many Jews understood Daniel 2, 7 and 9 correctly in view of the timing of God's plan to restore the Davidic kingdom in the Messiah. The angel Gabriel tells Mary this in Luke 1:30-33 "He will receive the throne of His ...
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Here is a good definition of gehena:
Gehenna:
(originally Ge bene Hinnom; i.e., "the valley of the sons of Hinnom"), a deep, narrow glen to the south of Jerusalem, where the idolatrous Jews offered their children in sacrifice to Molech (2Ch 28:3; 33:6; Jer 7:31; 19:2-6). This valley afterwards became the common receptacle for all the refuse of the ...
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My Take On The Question(s) Behind The Question
Based on the cursory information available in Wikipedia, Ched Myers is a Liberation Theologian. There's nothing wrong with this as it provides some valuable insight into a potential, auxiliary reading of a given text. As such, it is natural that he views this in light of social stratifications, and how those ...
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