Biblical Realities? Ask My Pastor What?
Some biblical truths, but they are an opinion-a Bagnolo point of view on translations and interpretations, which I found to be less than accurate. But Hell, I could be wrong. However, I doubt that, to me they look pretty cut and dried.
From My Blogspot: #preview http://bagnolosblogspot.com Reply To: The Grave Of Jesus And Family-Cameron THE GRAVE OF JESUS AND FAMILY By Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo Anthropologist, Theologian, etc. Rabbi Yeshua, Joshua, (Jesus Ben Yoseph) was born in the reign of Herod the Great, sometime between 8-4 BC and died somewhere between 25-29 AD. The gospels were written: 1st-Mark's between 65-72 AD, 2nd-Matthews, between then and about 80 AD, Luke's about late 80's AD, John's in 92-110 AD. Because the extant gospels were not written until 36-85 years after the death of Jesus, it is doubtful that any of the writers of the gospels ever met Jesus or even, with the later writers, ever met anyone who ever met Jesus. None of the writers, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, were apostles, in fact no one knows their real names. Those names were added to the gospels by early church authorities to lend credence to the writings. (This is information that can be found in most unbiased bibles, like the St. Joseph New American Version, found in most bookstores.) Although it is possible, but only barely, that Mark was the Mark who sometimes traveled with St. Paul. There is also strong evidence that the writers were not Hebrews, but Gentiles, because of the many errors in Hebrew culture displayed in the New Testament. The earliest gospels extant are copies, of copies, of copies, of copies, are in Greek, and date to the late second to early third centuries. There have been about 5400 manuscripts representing gospels found over the last 1700 years; some are small fragments, some more than that, some are complete versions. Over the course of those 5400 versions of the New Testament, there are many differences, ranging from subtle edits, redactions, and changes to major story insertions or removals and later reinsertions with and without changes. There are also a great many errors of cultural and historical note. For one Quirynius mentioned as the governor who ordered the census, which forced Joseph and Mary than pregnant with Jesus to go to Bethlehem, has been found to be governor of Judea when Jesus was a teenager, so could not have ordered that census. There is great doubt among historians expert in the practicality of the Romans, that they would have instituted such an ineffective and unintelligent complexity of moving people around the country to "register" in their hometown. The Romans, if nothing else were not stupid and such a census was simply stupid. Moving an entire population around in that way would accomplish nothing and would have been useless for taxing purposes since people paid their taxes in the towns in which they lived, not the towns in which they were born but no longer live. If there were records of who was born where, the records would have been transferred, not the people, if necessary, but it was unnecessary back then when records were poorly kept if kept at all in smaller towns, which is an excellent reason for people to simply never go and register at all because no one would have been the wiser about their life, death or very existence. The emphasis on Mary's eternal virginity came about more than 300 years after her death and surfaced as dogma during Constantine's reign. The evidence of the mentions of Jesus brothers and sisters being cousins is poor. Paul who spoke and wrote excellent Greek never used the word Anepsios, Greek for cousin, when referring to Jesus' siblings, using instead the word Adelphos, Greek for brother, when speaking of Jesus' Brothers, and most specifically when speaking of his brother St. James, Paul and other's fluent in Greek referred to St. James as, "James the Just, the Brother of the Lord", using the word Adelphos for Brother." Since we know little of Jesus' life from ages 12-30, there is no evidence that he was not married, as we do know that some of the apostles were married and most probably all who worked were married. In one of the Lost Gospels of the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945 outside of that town, 3rd century monks had buried the Codex's, more than 50 of them, because suddenly under the military dogma of the new convert Constantine, Emperor, only the "accepted" (canon) version of the New Testament were to be allowed to survive. The Monks, of a more democratic state of mind hid them hoping that after the reign of Constantine led by Athanasius' purge of books, they could unearth their beloved gospels-it never was to be, not until 1945. In correct translations, Jesus never stated that he was "The Only Begotten Son of God." The term "son of man" was a common one to distinguish a man born out of woman of man, was human neither an angel nor a demon. God used the term as a greeting to Ezekiel and others. It was never capitalized except in the New Testament and capitalized or not, it still means the same thing, a human being born of a man out of a woman, nothing more. For other uses, see Son of man (disambiguation). The phrase son of man is a primarily Semitic idiom that originated in Ancient Mesopotamia, used to denote humanity or self. In Akkadian, son of man is: ▪ ameluti In Sumerian, son of man is: ▪ DUMU.LU.ULU.LU (?) In Hebrew, son of man is either: ▪ בן אדם [ben 'adam] ▪ בן אנש [ben 'enosh] In Aramaic, son of man due to spelling variants and morphological shifts is either: ▪ ברנש [barnash] ▪ ברנשא [barnasha'] ▪ בר נש [bar nash] ▪ בר נשא [bar nasha'] ▪ בר אנש [bar 'anash] ▪ בר אנוש [bar 'anowsh] ▪ בר אנשא [bar 'ansha'] ▪ ברה דאנשא [breh dansha'] ▪ (and a few others) [edit]Ancient Semitic literature The most common use is similar to that of the English word "human." For example: [edit]1QapGen 1QapGen. XXI.13: MT שיא (Gen. 13.16) ואשגה זרעך כעפר ארשא די לא ישכח בר אנוש לממדיה And I will multiply your seed like the dirt of the earth which no son of man (בר אנוש : [bar 'anowsh]) can count. (Aramaic) In the Hebrew of Genesis 13:6, the word translated as בר אנוש (son of man) was איש (man). [edit]Book of the Laws of the Countries This is the oldest general discussion of mankind in the Aramaic language, and we can see that ברנשא bar nasha is used in a general form for humanity: Bardaisan, The Book of the Laws of the Countries, p. 559, lines 11-14: כינה דברנשא הנו דנתילד ונתרבא ודנקום באקמא ודנולד ודנקש כד אכל וכד שתא וכד דמך וכד מתתששעיר ודמות This is the nature of the son of man (דברנשא : [debarnasha']), that he should be born and grow up and reach is peak and reproduce and grow old, while eating and drinking and sleeping and waking, and that he should die. [edit]Story of Haninah ben Dosa Similarly we can see in the story of how Haninah ben Dosa was bitten by a snake while praying to God: y. Ber 5. 1/26 (9a) כד הוות נכית לבר נשא אין בר נשא קדים למיא חברברא מיית ואין חברברא קדטם למיא בר נשא מיית When it bites the son of man (בר נשא : [bar nasha']), if the son of man (בר נשא : [bar nasha']) reaches the water first, then snake dies; and if the snake reaches the water first, the son of man (בר נשא : [bar nasha']) dies. Here we see that it is not only a method for referring to mankind, but as a way to piously refer to oneself. Here is a quote directly from a Hebrew translation of their Old Testanment concerning the use of the word Almah which Christians use to describe Mary as virgin in the prophecy of Isaiah: Judaism reads the verse in Isaiah 7:14 as: "Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: behold, the young woman [ha-almah] shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanu-el". [1] Judaism affirms that [ha-almah] ("young woman") does not refer to a virgin and that had the Tanakh intended to refer to such, the specific Hebrew word for virgin [bethulah] would have been used. This view is often disputed by Christians (see below), and has been a point of contention between Jews and Christians since the formation of the modern Church. Jerome, in 383 CE, wrote in "Adversus Helvidium" that Helvidius misunderstood just this same point of confusion between the Greek and the Hebrew. To those of faith the words and deeds of the true Jesus; Mary need not be a virgin and Jesus need not be "The Only Begotten Son of God" for us to hold him in reverence any less then we hold Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Elias, Elijah, David, St. Jude, St. Francis, St. Teresa, or Mother Teresa. Paul felt the need to convert Greeks and other Gentiles who would accept nothing less than a god that the tact of elevating Jesus to the rank of God was born. In the 3rd century, the argument began about Jesus eternality and Godship, supported by Athanasius and opposed by Arius, whose assessment of the situation was more logical, and saw Jesus as Messiah, appointed to adopted son of God because of Jesus' piety and courage. St. James the Just, Brother of the Lord, had a church which rivals even the congregation's of today's churches, more than 8600 members James believed Jesus, his brother to be the Messiah, not God. He called his church the Church of the Nazarene.
Judeo/Christian views of property, bankruptcy and the Jubilee Year, were being trampled upon by conservative businessmen of the era, which bytheway was the real reason for Jesus' hasty execution-he was reexamining Moses idea of socializing the land and the people. You probably know all this and it is in one of my upcoming books which shoots down the idea of religious persecution of Jesus. Everything is always about the money. The execution of Jesus by Rome and the Chief Herodian Priests, was no exception, and was not about theology. Religious Arguments far exceeding those of Jesus and his opponents were always brewing in Israel among the argumentive rabbi's. Jesus' execution was as much about the money as it Bush' attack on Iraq. Funny how Americans accept socialization of government, of schools, police, fire departments, city services, the military, but socialization of not necessary products like fuel, water, housing, medical care and other personal necessities? It is about the money, avarice, and about contempt for the masses and for the God these fascists claim to serve-hypocrisy. Moses deeded to each Judean Peasant a few acres of land as "Social Security" on which to grow enough food for the family and allow some excess to be sold. He wanted them healthy for many reasons, one being he might need them for combat. Both Romans and some Herodian officials were Practicing Fascism, before the term was defined and coined in modern times. They were confiscating land breaking the bankruptcy laws initiated by Moses. They were also commercializing the land, in violation of his ancient concept. Priests were banned form owning land, like Cheney they made up their own rules.
They were also outsourcing labor to scabs and selling it to rich Greeks and Romans at prices out of the reach of peasant Jews. (Sound familiar?) There was aside from the 7 years-bankruptcy forgiveness policy, in the 7th application of each 7 year's of forgiveness of bankruptcy-the 50th year, was the JUBILEE YEAR or as Jesus called it, THE YEAR OF THE LORD, in which all land confiscated or bought for debt had to be returned to the family from which it was taken. The Romans, my rather brutal ancestors, rarely if ever crucified mere minor leaders alone. When they captured Spartacus they crucified him and 6,000 of his officers-mass execution was their means of ideas-nullification through forced attrition. Among Jesus' followers, none but he were executed. His speech on the portico after his attack on the profiteers there earlier in the day, sealed his fate. The turning point was his mention of the YEAR OF THE LORD disguised to mean THE JUBILEE YEAR in the New Testament. Apparently, some Herodian Priests were buying and commercializing land against Jewish Law, they hypocritically claimed they could own, but not work land. Therefore they had to get rid of Jesus before his next opportunity to speak, the next day or there might have been a riot turning the Zealots to assassination of Chief Herodian Priests instead of Romans. The Romans agreed with the idea of eliminating Jesus in a hurry because many lower level Roman officials were joined in the land commercialization scheme thus were "skimming' on the take to Caesar, a no-no for sure. Rome would only tolerate corruption at the top. The article in Time magazine referred to a Darrell Bock, a professor at the conservative Protestant Dallas Seminary, whom the Discovery Channel had review the film recently, asked a question which disqualifies him as an expert: "Why would Jesus' family or followers bury his bones in a family plot and then turn around and preach that he had been physically raised from the dead?" Why? If Block knew enough about Jesus he would have known that Jesus' family and Apostles, save for James, His brother, who was assassinated, and Peter who was crucified, were ouster sized from any part in the later church by Paul and others who did not want the power of James The Just, Brother of The Lord's huge following (8,000 parishioners at His Messianic Hebrew Church) which did not depict Jesus as "Son of God" but as messiah/prophet. In addition, apparently the burial secrecy worked, because it took 2000 years to uncover the switch. Jesus' family and only a few apostles were sparsely present in the Acts and other books, which followed the four gospels. I am A Roman Catholic, descendant of both Duke Bagnolo, Leader of the Albigensian Heresy and St. John Leonardi, canonized Saint. My Grandfather was L. Onofrio Iuzzolino, visionary, Prophet and true Christian.
