Cessationism

(Part 2)

I'd had a portion of this previously penned for publication when a certain revelatory hypothesis hit me. Now, just like any of my other hypothesis; I don't know if this one is "on the money" but it does make logical sense. So, here it is.

Pentecost the Tower of Babel and the origin of Language:

In many of my excursions to the "Christian Forums" web sight; I've been engaged in conversations / debates with people concerning Pentecost, the binding of Satan, eschatology, the atonement, etc.

Well one day I was contemplating the happenings in the Book of Acts and an observation suddenly struck me.

There were two different accounts of peoples' experience listening to the apostles preach. In one account, people heard what the apostles were proclaiming in their own native language. Yet in another account, other's claimed they were drunk.

Which…. this struck an idea in my head; which sparked a hypothesis as to what was going on. Clearly, foreigners heard the gospel in foreign languages. But those who did not believe, appeared to be hearing something they did not comprehend? So the question struck me: What language were the apostles actually speaking?

Thus, the formulation of a theory:

First thing I noticed when I looked at the language "we all heard them (the apostles) in the tongue which we were born". I looked up the word "born" and realized it's not the same word "born" as in "Jesus was born in Bethlehem." The word "born" here isn't necessarily referring to someone's birth place, as much as the "origin point" of something. And in this case; it doesn't appear that it was a reference to the origin point of all these foreigners' birth places; but more in origin point of their languages. Thus the question: Well, where were these languages born?

Let's back up in time a little bit to the Tower of Babel!

Every language that exists on earth today; has its origin in what ever that original language was that all of humanity spoke prior to the Tower of Babel incident. Now what language was that? (It was probably some variant of "Hebrew"); but just for discussion sake; let's call it "paleo-human language".

My conclusion of "some variant of "Hebrew" has to do with the fact that not everyone lost the ability to understand each other. Thus assuming the original language God spoke to Adam (and the language Adam's posterity would have learned from Adam) was probably some variant of "Hebrew".

Now there actually is some archeological evidence of this. Many years ago, I stumbled across an article written in an archeological magazine about a discovery in China. Under a slab of mud that was about 2 to 3 stories thick, they found the remains of an ancient civilization with writing that resembled Middle Eastern cuneiform. Since then, there have been multiple examples of ancient Semitic type languages found in China that span multiple eras. Some of these coexist in eras containing both Semitic styled, as well as Sino-Tibetan styled language base examples.

Ironically also, there are even some examples of Old Testament Scriptures found in a paleo-Hebrew script in China that would have dated between King David and about 400 BC. (The era in which the Old Testament was still being written.) There were actually some evidence of "Jewish settlements" (or at least portions of Middle Eastern cultures that were imported into China) that have also been found. These settlements though were a cultural mixture of Chinese customs and Middle-Eastern religions; much of which weren't wholly "Hebrew". Thus they were deemed "Chinese Jews." Which this may have been more of cultural curiosities carried in from subsequent Chinese travelers then settlements of Middle Eastern peoples. To my knowledge, no remains of "transplanted" Semitic ethnic people groups have been found in China.

Currently there's many archeological digs being performed in China that are believed to be evidence of an ancient culture (pre-Sino-Tibetan language base) that subsequent Chinese dynasties eluded to; but until very recently, this kingdom was believed to be mythological. The current hypothesis is that these artifacts in China date to about the same time as King Tut (who's currently dated to have reigned between 1332-1323 B.C.) Yet clearly at the contemporary time of Tutankhamun and the same era Mayan civilization; both had well developed written language. Which if this Chinese site is of that same era; evidence of written language should be unearthed at some point.

The first discovery of this mystery kingdom was made by a Chinese farmer in the city limits of Chengdu in the province of Sanxingdui China who was digging a well. Subsequent digs have uncovered multiple pits full of artifacts believed to be religious sacrificial burial sites. Although now they've also unearthed evidence of buildings, which would indicate these people likely lived somewhere in the area.

The mythical kingdom was referred to by subsequent Chinese dynasties as a remote kingdom called Shu. The amount of archeological evidence that has been uncovered now though; leads archeologists to conclude that the "Shu kingdom" was pretty extensive; as well as being advanced. Though no writing has been found in these archeological sites to date; there's much conjecture that this kingdom, ancient Egypt and the Mayans may be linked, as the artistic stylization of the artifacts bear some striking similarities.

The other popular theory is that these civilizations were seeded by extraterrestrial life.

But anyhow; back to the "common link of all human language":

Now grated language changes over time. That's just a natural variant of adaptation and Hebrew in that regard, is no different than any other language. And thus, the original language of humanity was probably some variant there of. Yet what language it was specifically, is probably not as important as the fact that there existed a language that every other language sprang from. Thus "paleo-human language".

So, if the language the apostles preached on Pentecost, was the "origin point" / "birth place" of all human language; than what they spoke very well could have been the original human language God spoke to Adam in; which by 33 AD would have certainly been "extinct" as a "natural language" understood by human beings.

Which connecting this to "The Jew requires a sign" and the sign of tongues being some variant of "paleo-Hebrew" (being a sign of judgment against the unbelieving nation) makes sense too. The whole irony of the event being that the gentiles could understand the apostles, but unbelieving Jews couldn't, despite they were probably speaking "Old Hebrew".

Now I don't know if this is what actually happened; but it makes good sense in regards to the fact that certain people (namingly unbelievers) didn't understand what the apostles were saying. (We know this because they claimed the apostles were drunk.) Yet was that language "familiar sounding" enough to draw a conclusion of: "Well they must be drunk." Note too that the accusation wasn't that they were speaking gibberish either!

So, there's my little "side track hypothesis" about what language were the apostles actually speaking at Pentecost. Don't know if I'm right; but interesting thought anyhow.

Prophets and Apostles:

Now, let's kick this section off with a couple of sets of numbers that seem to make a comparison between time and eternity.

Exodus 4: God explains to Moses, that God will put God's own words in Moses's mouth. Moses is to tell Aaron (who's Moses's "prophet" because Moses is like unto God to Pharaoh (as well as "like unto God" to Aaron).

Deuteronomy 18:20-22: Signs of a prophet - predictions will always come true.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5: Able to do miracles.

Message will be in complete agreement with previous revelation.

Elijah before he calls down fire from heaven, prays that God prove that Elijah has spoken the words God told him to speak. He calls on God to validate the office of prophet He's given Elijah. (1 Kings 18:36)

John 5:36: Jesus makes the point that the miracles he performs proves he is the Messiah; "The works testify that the Father sent me."

John 6:14: Feeding the 5000; the people recognize because of that miracle, Jesus is sent by God.

John 7:31: People state surely he (Jesus) is the Messiah because no one has (or will) perform more miracles than he does.

John 10:24: Jesus states to the pharisees that the works he does testify that the Father sent him, but they will not believe because they are not his sheep. Verse 37: "If I don't do the works of my Father, than don't believe me; but believe the works, that I am in my Father and my Father is in me.

The point of the miracles were to prove that Jesus was sent from God.

Acts 2:22: Peter states that Jesus performed miracles as verification that he was the Messiah. "He was attested to you by God…."

Acts 14:3: The point that Jesus imparted miraculous ability to the disciples was to verify that they were those he'd sent.

Hebrews 2:3-4: Makes the same point, that miracles were given as a proof that God empowered these people to speak His message.

So here is the stated reason out of Scriptural texts, for anyone being given the ability to perform miraculous actions. Add to this that it is well understood that the major miracle performer was the Messiah himself. Note though too the difference between the types of miracles that Jesus performed, as opposed to the types of miracles prophets and apostles performed. Much of what Jesus did consisted of healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.

Now of course there are a couple of places in both the Old Testament, as well as the Epistles and gospels where the prophets and apostles healed the sick, cast out demons and raised the dead.

Compare this though to what's recorded of what Moses did, or Elijah, or actions such as the Ark of the Covenant in the temple of Baal, or that people who touched the ark died, or those who got too close to Mt. Sini died; (those types of things etc). These things were more miracles that dealt with the laws that governed the material cosmos. They weren't of the command of the possession of the "breath of life" as would have been required for healing, or raising the dead types of miracles.

Now compare those to what "passes" as "miracles" today. (BIG DIFFERENCE!)

The Canon of Scripture - Round 2:

In the following segment, I will address things that have come to light from post 1st century church history; including the archeology of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Masoretic Hebrew Text vs. The Greek Septuagint:

Now here's where things get interesting from the vanish point of church history. This information just recently came to my attention, as I was researching translations and "Hebrew text variants" I'd heard about from YouTube videos put out by University linguistic experts in ancient Semitic languages.

This is where it gets "complicated". The first "large scale" vernacular translation out of the Greek New Testament Texts was the Latin Vulgate. This is the the translation the Roman Catholic Church authorized. This was about 400 AD and a monk named Jerome did the translation.

I'd written a section on this in another chapter in the previous END TIMES I study.

Jerome, looking to translate from Old Testament Hebrew had a copy of what we call the Masoretic Text. Now the Masoretic Text is not the same text as what's found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls is a form called "Paleo-Hebrew". The rendering of the Dead Sea Scrolls is very similar to the Masoretic Text (at least as far as we've been told); but there are some differences.

The extent of those differences will be interesting to find out. The complete rendering of the Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew OT canon has been printed in book form and is available for sale on Amazon. It's about $260. I did buy myself a copy of it and I'm interested to look particularly at the Book of Daniel.

The reason Daniel sparks my curiosity is because when I went through some of the former chapters in the previous END TIMES I study; there were times I'd look at the Hebrew and wonder: where in the world did they get that English translation from? Because to me, the Hebrew seemed to be conveying some greater expansive ideas than the English translation did.

The English translation in some parts of Daniel was very "wooden"; and I know King James translates did that "on purpose". When they had trouble trying to translate the seeming intent of the words on the page; they went for the literal word for word translation; trying to convey the text in English that made the most sense, sentence wise.

So I'm a bit eager to jump into the Book of Daniel, to see what the differences are because I suspect that is one book where the majority of the corruptions occurred.

Now, the back story of Jerome; the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint:

Jerome lived in Jerusalem and he got his copies of the Masoretic Text from a bunch of "Jewish rabbis" (The Mesorites). Interestingly though, the eastern church warned Jerome that the Masoretic Text was "corrupted" and that he should use the Septuagint for his translation from the Old Testament into Latin.

Jerome had a copy of the Septuagint and he did reference it. He had a lot of copies of texts in different languages; including Coptic Egyptian and Arabic. By the time Jerome did his Latin Vulgate translation; the eastern church did have a body of New Testament texts that later in history would come to be known as the "Critical texts" (as opposed to the "Received text" which is what the Latin Vulgate Greek New Testament was translated off of). Portions of the "Critical texts" came from the "original" Alexandrian copies. And the "Critical texts" compared to the "Received texts" has some similar variants as are found between the basic Masoretic Text compared to the Paleo-Hebrew.

Now where this gets interesting is that the rabbis who created the Masoretic Text apparently had older copies of the Hebrew that they made their "translation" off of. Why they didn't just copy the old scrolls word for word is the crux of the question. And what happened to these older scrolls; no one… "knows". Apparently though, these rabbis destroyed them.

Now did the eastern church have copies of these earlier Hebrew scrolls? (That I don't know?) There may have been individual scrolls "floating around" that non-"Jews" had gotten a hold of; but there was no complete Old Testament in Hebrew.

How many older scrolls these rabbis had access to; isn't known either. Where there older Hebrew scrolls they had, that they'd destroyed in favor of their Masoretic translation? (That appears to be the case.) And it is also an accusation that Jeromes eastern church contemporaries laid against these rabbis. So assuming that the eastern church had some texts to compare these to; (besides the Septuagint)? I do know that the eastern churches supplied Jerome with copies of all the texts that they had (some of which may have included Hebrew).

We also know that a complete copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew existed at the time of Christ. We know this because the entire Old Testament has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. (This includes the Book of Esther. Now I don't know if the entire book of Esther has been pieced together yet; but we know parts of it have been found. Esther was the only book questioned as canon from the Dead Sea Scrolls; (and the era they are believed to be persevered from: (about 200 BC) until they found fragments of it.)

The accusation laid by the eastern church against the rabbis, was that they'd intentionally distorted portions of the Old Testament text to intentionally hide that Jesus was the Messiah. And now that we have pre 1st century texts to compare to; we see some of these alterations.

Ironically, these accusations of corrupting the Hebrew Text today; are not just coming from pre-20th century Christianity. They are now even coming from language scholars within modern Judaism, who are stating that the presentation of how the Masoretic Text is used in Rabbinic Judaism, intentionally attempts to hide that these rabbis know Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

Generally this accusation comes from Christian converts out of Rabbinic Judaism who've studied both sets of texts; as well as people from within the Messianic Jewish community.

I'd seen an interesting confrontation posted to YouTube from a Messianic fellow on the subject; addressing a rabbi teaching Hebrew in a university in Jerusalem. Most of the complaints that I've seen, are concerning the Book of Daniel. (Thus my curiosity to take a look at the Paleo-Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls of Daniel.)

So that is the back story about the questions raised concerning the corruptions intentionally written into the Masoretic Text.

The other fascinating irony of all this is, that even with the variants of the Masoretic Text; it's really hard to hide that Jesus is the Messiah; because the variants are so subtle they can be interpreted in different ways. There's no hard and fast way that these rabbis have to say that even the corrupted Masoretic Text doesn't point to Christ.

So thus the principle that God preserves His word still stands!

The Dead Sea Scrolls:

So with that in mind; let's take a survey of what archeology has found of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Apocrypha:

Only three books of the Apocrypha are in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

None have renderings in Hebrew. All date between 150 to 300 BC.

Wisdom of Ben Sira: Dates itself to 150 BC; although we know that the Dead Sea Scrolls date to the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD; (thus the copy found may be later than 150 BC). This book has multiple renderings with different verses altogether.

Tobit: 2nd or 3rd century BC. Could not have been written before 300 BC because of commencement of writing of Septuagint. Story is of northern tribes person taken by Assyrians. Contains obvious errors of Babylonian history. Only work alleged to be written by northern tribes person. Is believed to be intentionally written as a fictitious story (thus the statement about Nebuchadnezzar ruling from Assyria).

Epistle of Jeremiah: Dates between 306 and 317 BC. Only book that quotes portions of the book of Jeremiah.

Septuagint:

First rendering of Septuagint contained only the Torah. It commenced somewhere post 350 BC. There are copies of the Septuagint in the Dead Sea Scrolls and this is where the apocrypha books are found.

There are no copies of the Apocrypha books in the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Hebrew. This is despite modern Judaism claims the Apocrypha books were originally written in Hebrew. There is no evidence from archeology that they ever were.

Samaritan Pentateuch:

The same was true of the Samaritan Pentateuch; which the oldest copies known to the western world, only date to 1600 AD. It is a Semitic language variant of Hebrew.

The first Biblical reference to the Samaritans is in Ezra. Though the book of Kings stated that the Samaritans weren't ethnically Israelites (from the Assyrian captivity). But they were probably more of Semitic related converts; as they were considered "cousins" to the Jews.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the only body of work the Samaritans recognized as Scripture. (No copies of major or minor prophets.) And they (like the Muslims concerning the Quran) claim to have the "uncorrupted text" of the Torah. Thus any writing of the Samaritan Pentateuch can not predate 600 BC.

Canon of Scripture?

So, what is the true canon of Scripture and does it actually matter, when we consider the concept that "God preserves His word"? Could the rendering of the Old Testament that existed in the 1st century; only have been applicable to that era, (seeing how that era was coming to an end anyways)? Or, did it really matter post the writing of the New Testament, that what appeared in print as the Old Testament, had changed in the course of two centuries?

Despite the differences between the Paleo-Hebrew and the Masoretic text; there's nothing in the Masoretic text that actually denies Christ is the Messiah, despite the alterations were made in an attempt to hid the fact that the rabbis knew he was! Thus God's genius still outstrips the attempted cleverness of man.

So, given the length now; I'm going to end this chapter here. It has turned into something very different than I originally thought it was going to be. So thus, readers will likely get a Cessationism (part 3).

That chapter will cover the "naturalness" of experiences we have. Things like premonitions, dreams, things we just "know" for reasons we can't explain. All are evidences that this cosmos isn't just atoms smacking into each other. There is a thread of some "force" in natural operation running through life itself.