Conservative Friends Bible Study of The Gospel of John #1

Henry launches this podcast series of the Gospel of John with a quick overview. What follows is a bulleted list of his introductory comments, then Henry’s comments on verses 1-5 of Chapter 1.   

• The Gospel of John was written in Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the time. Koine is a language descendent of Attic Greek, spoken about 300-400 years before. 
• Because Henry has extensive training as a speech pathologist and linguist, he often looks at the language of Holy Scripture from a linguistic point of view. 
• There is some possible disconnect between the last verses of Chapter 20, and Chapter 21 of John’s Gospel. The multiple, disjointed changes back and forth in pronoun from “I” to “we” in these two chapters seem to indicate either additions, or changes in the text. It is possible Chapter 21 was added some time later.  
• Henry goes on to discuss some of the issues concerning the authorship of the five works in the Holy Scriptures attributed to John: the Gospel of John, the three Epistles of John and the Revelation of John. While these five are usually attributed to the same John, it should be noted that the Greek in the Book of Revelation is somewhat rougher in grammar and usage than the Greek of the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John. 
•  The intended audience for the Gospel was largely Greek-speaking, and thus when Aramaic words are presented, there are translations for those to enable the Greek-speaking audience to understand what is being said. 
• There are frequent contrasts presented in the text: light/darkness; truth/deceit; the day of Jahweh/the day of Jesus to name a few. 
• There is a realized eschatology in the Gospel so that eternal life and the kingdom of God are not confined to the afterlife, but can be realized in the present, earthly life before physical death. 
• The Koine Greek language was written in capital letters, with no punctuation nor spaces between the words. 

Verses 1-5

John 1:1 intentionally parallels Genesis 1:1 verse. 

The Greek word “logos” is a rich, multi-meaning term with meanings such as these:

1. Any kind of verbal utterance: a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a whole speech or talk. In modern Greek, “logos” has the same meanings. 
2. Reason/wisdom coming from within.  The English word, “logic” has its root in “logos”.
3. The noun form is “logos” and the verb and adjective form is “lego”. 

 The Bible is frequently called “the Word” by many Christians. However, the term, “word” is always and only used in the Holy Scriptures to refer to Christ. Early Friends were adamant about not referring to the words of the Holy Scriptures as “the Word”, but instead only referring to Christ as the Word.

  The advice in our introduction is from page 33 of the Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline.

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To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit  ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome! 

We also have several Zoom study groups.  Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.   

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

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Transcript

Host 0:00

Advice number twenty. Follow steadfastly after all that is pure and lovely and of good report. Be prayerful, be watchful, be humble. Let no failure discourage you. When temptation comes, make it an opportunity to gain new strength by standing fast that you may enter into that life of gladness and victory to which all are called. From Ohio Yearly Meetings Book of Discipline.

Henry Jason 0:33

This is the Greek Bible study of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative, and we are about to begin the new series on reading and discussing the Gospel according to John. This is session number one. For those of you who are new to this, I'd like to just say that basically what I do is I read part of the section, whatever we're doing. It might just be two or three sentences, it might be a paragraph. We are in no rush to go through any of the readings we do. And I suspect that reading the gospel according to John will probably take a whole year. Sometimes we don't get very far, maybe just a few lines. It depends on the material. And what I often do, as you know, is I will make a word document with some of the vocabulary that I'll bring forth to uh show some of the interesting Greek words. The gospel itself, of course, was written in Koine Greek, which means common Greek, which was the common Greek language of the first century. In the Mediterranean and Mideast, after the conquest of Alexander the Great three, four hundred years earlier, Greek became the international language of that part of the world. It's very similar to how English after World War II or even before with the British Empire became a much more international language as it is today. This was true of Greek at that time. In Palestine, the local language was Aramaic and Hebrew, but Aramaic seemed to predominate. Hebrew was still spoken, but it was also the religious language of Jews. So you would have someone like the Apostle Paul would be a native speaker of Aramaic and Hebrew, no Hebrew, and also spoke Greek. He was from Tarsus, just outside of Israel, Palestine area. I'm just going to give a little history. As those of you who have followed our sessions in the past, you kind of know my system. I just want to give some history here. There's so much written on the gospel according to John. I do not have any background in seminary or divinity school or anything like that. I did originally start college majoring in Latin and ancient Greek before switching to Slavic languages and also have a background in linguistics. So that's very important in terms of how I perceive things, which can be a bit different than you find many scholars do, just from the kind of perspective I've had as a speech pathologist, which is what I've worked at most of my life. I'm retired now, but in working with patients who had strokes, head injuries, brain damage of one sort or another, and would have a variety of interesting linguistic problems. Also, I've taught on the side. I'm certified to teach English as a second language, also English as a foreign language, two certificates there. So my background's really been in language, and you'll see how I perceive a lot of how we read and where I pay attention to things. Please, those who have been here know that we can kind of comment on lots of things, interrupt, ask questions, go back. It's pretty informal, and that's fine with me. I think I'd prefer it that way. I'd rather go into depth rather than go quickly and go on to things. All right, let me just give uh a few thoughts here as to the gospel itself. As I said, it was written in Koine Greek, and as we know, all of the writings that we have of the New Testament were written in Koine Greek. Whether some of them were written in something earlier, like Aramaic, that's probable, perhaps things for things like the Gospel according to Matthew. But anyway, they wrote final editions we have are in this international language of Koine Greek. Koine Greek is a descendant of Attic Greek or the Greek that you know of in the classical writers of Athens, Aristotle, Plato, all the dramatists, and uh all the basic writings that you know of there. This is a specific direct descendant of that type of Greek, which was spoken about three, four hundred years before. When was it written? Scholars think that this final edition, the Gospel according to John, was written in the 90s. So we're talking about 60 years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus. There are other people who think somewhat differently, but that seems to be the general consensus. What's also important to understand there is that it probably went through several editions. If you go to the very last two chapters of this gospel, at the very end of chapter 20, verses 30 and 31, these two lines appear to be the original ending of this gospel. I'm reading from the New Revised Standard Version. Many scholars think that the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version are the best modern English translations. But even with these translations, there are problems. And we'll we'll see that as we go along here. In verse 30 in chapter 20, it says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. Probably that sounds like the ending of one version of this, an earlier edition. You then have this appearance of Jesus at the Sea of Tiberias when the disciples were fishing there. But also at the very end, if we go to the very end of the gospel in chapter 21, there's uh verses 24 and 25. It says here, this is the disciple referring to this beloved disciple who is never named, just mentioned to be the beloved disciple. This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. This is a very interesting comment here, these last two verses. What it's saying is the source of material is this disciple, this unknown, unnamed disciple, the beloved disciple. Some modern scholars think that this perhaps was Lazarus. The more traditional thought was that the gospel, according to John, was somehow connected with the apostle John. I don't want to get into that sort of thing because those kinds of disputes can go on forever. But I'm just mentioning this possibility. In that same verse in 24, it says, We know that his testimony is true. This is interesting. Who is this we? Definitely more than one person involved here. And finally, it says in the last verse, but there are also many other things that Jesus did if every one of them were written down. I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Who is this I? We have an I, we have a we, and we have a source, which is very interesting because as we go through this gospel, you'll see that there are many places that appear disjointed. Suddenly it appears they're saying goodbye to each other, and then it goes on in the next verse as if they've not gone anywhere. Someone has commented that it seems that with the original manuscript, someone just threw it down on the floor and picked up all the pieces and kind of put them together, uh, trying to figure out where they all fit. But we'll get to those passages and look at them. Or it could have been various things, maybe more likely, that were notes and things written down by that beloved disciple or or for him and then put together after his death. And what we have is what we have here. But it appears clear that we're dealing with an addition that's later than whatever the first or second may have been. Any comments on that?

Speaker 1 8:44

I believe, Henry, that uh Paul Anderson uh speaks to this and says that uh John the Elder wrote the final version of the Gospel of John, and that he wrote it to kind of contest, which this would be Raymond Brown now, uh, wrote about John's Gospel, how you know it's it's all about peace and love. But actually, there was a war going on between various Christian communities. But uh I think Paul Anderson, if I remember correctly, more or less said that John the Elder was writing this even to contest what some of the Joanine community was going with. So he was trying to say that this is the version, this is you know the truth that we even in the Joannine community need to follow. So even the Joannine community was having differences, yeah.

Henry Jason 9:41

In the second and third epistles, it mentions that it's the elder who is writing, John the elder who is writing to the particular people uh mentioned there. And of course, people also have connected the book of Revelation with the epistles and the gospel according to John, but it seems very clear, even in ancient times, that there were people who contested whether that was the same John, because the Greek language there is of a very different sort than what you have in the Gospel and in the epistles. Uh, someone whose Greek was not perfect, like maybe was a speaker of Aramaic in a first language, and that his Greek was not quite as good as the writers. So these these are all kinds of questions. I I don't want to go in this direction, but you know, you could discuss this. This is the sort of thing that scholars discuss, and uh the purpose of this particular series is is not to go in there uh in that direction. Um you mentioned like Raymond Brown is probably the most was the most eminent scholar of uh all the Johannine writings, and uh I I think that's still true today. Uh, not that uh you know we have to agree with everything he says, but uh just mentioned that's Raymond E. Brown. There are two Raymond Browns, by the way. Right. Am I right? Yeah, he's the E. So okay, uh let me continue with a little preface here. Why? Uh Clem just brought that up. Uh it may be a defense against uh some of these, as I think Paul Anderson was saying, deviant Christian or a different Christian understandings, specifically things like the docetists, docetists, and others, and trying to really show that our source goes right back to the very beginning here, this beloved disciple, and that seems important. Who's the audience? Well, it's obviously to a Greek-speaking audience here. What's interesting though is that sometimes a Aramaic or Hebrew word is mentioned and then gets translated in the text, which would indicate that some of the readers of this gospel, or listeners, we should say, did not know Hebrew or Aramaic. They may have been non-Jewish Christians, so that those sorts of things were explained because the author or authors of this gospel were aware of that fact that not all of them were Aramaic and Hebrew speakers, a mixed group of Christians. A few other things here. It's been commented by a number of people that there's a very good knowledge of locations around Jerusalem and elsewhere in this gospel compared to the other three gospels. Even though it's written so many decades later, the source or the later writers really knew where things were, where places were, and there's that pool with the five porticos, which was only discovered, the ruins of it, a few decades ago. I mean, it was mentioned here in this gospel, but it was quite interesting to find it eventually. We'll get into looking at these kinds of contrasts that are seen throughout the gospel between light and darkness, truth and deceit, the angel of light and the angel of darkness, Biliar. And there are other kinds of comparisons made between the day of the Lord, the day of Yahweh, and then the day of Jesus. One very important thing, it's very important for friends, for Quakers, there's what's called this realized eschatology in this gospel. That eternal life, the kingdom of God, is not something confined to something so many have called afterlife, after you die, but that it's something that can be achieved, can be entered into, can be accessed even before death. And that is very important for Quakers. The eschatology, eschatology is a fancy word that has to do with the last things, final things, like in life or in the world. Realized means here that they can be accessed, achieved, entered into, obtained, inherited, all these words that you have in the Greek before death. There, and there's a lot that has to go into what you are in terms of repentance and taking up the cross of Christ, as friends have mentioned it and so forth, to get to that state, that state of being, that's state of God, the kingdom of God. Okay. Oh, a little bit about the language. This is uh actually, we will be talking a little bit about language and linguistics in this first section. Koine Greek, ancient Greek, was written very different than what you see in modern Greek. At that time, there were only capital letters, you know, what we would call printed capital letters of Greek. And there were no spaces, no spaces between words, none whatsoever. You just had this one long series of letters, capital letters, and there was absolutely no punctuation, no periods, commas, quotation marks, etc. etc. So sometimes later there were disputes as to where does a sentence end and where does a sentence begin. Is this a quotation or is this something else? And we'll see that happen in a number of places here, and me actually right away today, hopefully, as to that sort of thing. I'll just give an example now. I'm just going to put the Greek letters for the first line of this gospel. You can see how it looks like. Okay, that says NRK ain holagos. That's what it would look like when you see a manuscript. No break, none whatsoever. And actually, if I want to break it, this is how I'd do it. N okay. In beginning was the word. That's the kind of things scholars have to deal with when they're looking at a manuscript, a very early manuscript. All right. I'm going to read the first five verses here. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And that first verse, in the beginning, is another way of saying before time and space began, at the start of all things. And that's in the beginning. And you probably can reel you realize where that what that seems to imitate the very first words of Genesis in the beginning. It was the word. Now, this word logos, logos is a Greek word. Does anyone have any other translation besides word in this first verse?

Speaker 2 17:09

I have just the word logos.

Henry Jason 17:11

Oh, okay. It can mean expression. Yes, well, that's what I'm gonna get into. This word logos does not usually mean word, it has two general areas of meaning. And one area of meaning is anything verbally expressed, an expression verbally, or an utterance. So it can mean a word, it can mean a phrase, it can mean a sentence, it can mean a paragraph, it can mean actually a whole speech, a talk in ancient Greek. And it still has that meaning in modern Greek. Laos does have that same meaning: a sermon, a talk, a speech that someone gives. So it basically is any kind of verbal utterance or expression, verbal expression. We don't have a word like this in English that covers all of that, other than maybe an utterance or expression, but it's it's like I said, it goes from a simple word to a whole speech. It also has a second basic meaning of reason, reasoning, that internal kind of thing. Now, this logos, the traditional translation in English is word here, but I really want to point out that it doesn't usually mean that kind of word in English, I mean in Greek, that it really is this utterance or whatever. When it got translated into Latin originally, it was translated into this Latin word sermo. And if you know the Latin word sermo, that gives us our English word sermo sermon. But a sermo was a talk or a speech, and it could also mean occasionally a word. Later on, that Latin translation more often was the translation we now know as verbum, verbum. That's what you see in Latin translations of the later Latin translation. So that's where we get the word. What's being expressed here, if this were in Hebrew, and we're talking about the wisdom of God, this reasoning, this power. Many scholars today think that what we see here is something that's strongly influenced by the stoic writers and philosophers of this time, that Greek school of Stoicism. I don't think that's important for us to know in terms of getting a spiritual sense out of this. As I quite often keep reiterating in many of my talks here, as Robert Barclay and others' early friends said, we should look for the spiritual signification, the spiritual meaning of a passage. Don't get hung up necessarily on the literalness of it. It's the spirit, as Paul says, literalness kills, but the spirit gives life. The uh letter kills.

Speaker 3 20:02

I have a question, Henry.

Henry Jason 20:04

Sure.

Speaker 3 20:06

I have heard it suggested um by philosophers, and I have not dug into it that logos was also seen as a principle of creation. And I just don't know if you see it implied in this word or not.

Henry Jason 20:23

No, that's mentioned there. I'm forgetting if it's coming up or if it's I'm thinking of the first epistle of no, this that's here in this gospel. We're not talking about something physical here, but I think in that sense, you're talking about the more mental, the power of reason, the power of reasoning, or as it would have been expressed in the Old Testament, the wisdom of God, that aspect of God that was called wisdom. The word for wisdom in Greek is Sophia. You've probably seen that word. That's the Greek word for wisdom. Scholars see a lot of connections here in terms of Sophia and Lagos. I should just mention, also, getting back to logos, the root of the word, this word lego is the Greek word for speak. It's the same root, the L E G and the L-O-G.

Speaker 4 21:10

Is Lagos related to logic in English?

Henry Jason 21:14

Yes. Okay, let's continue. The noun is logos, the verb is lego, and that's the adjective. Logikos. Lego, logikos, logos, all the same root, okay? And again, logic has to do with reasoning, as I was saying. That's the internal understanding, this reasoning, as well as the verbal, the outward expression is what is expressed verbally. So we're kind of talking about both things here, as you'll see in the first few uh verses here of John. I should also mention that parts of these first verses here through uh verse 18 appear to be part of uh an ancient hymn. Some people think that it may have been an ancient Christian hymn that was put at the beginning of this gospel. This prologue may actually be some parts of an earlier hymn.

Speaker 4 22:05

Ask a follow-up about the logic and reasoning definition. Uh-huh. But I don't want to jump ahead of your schedule. Are we going to follow up more on that or should I ask a no?

Henry Jason 22:17

Uh go ahead now. I'm sure we'll be talking about this a lot more in the uh session to come because uh this is kind of a very essential uh point here in this whole gospel.

Speaker 4 22:30

Okay, so I would kind of make a brief argument for emphasizing the second meaning, the non-word meaning. And for spiritual purposes, particularly, I've made this argument plenty of times amongst friends, small F and capital F, and with very limited other than internet sort of knowledge of Greek. Um isn't it, especially for a lot of contemporary Protestants who emphasize the word and then often sometimes think the word is like literal, like the Bible, isn't sort of emphasizing the logic or the reasoning or the the way of God and Jesus as the incarnation of such, of sort of you know, love, nonviolence. Isn't that actually quite spiritually fruitful and sort of uh you brought up something I'm just trying to remember, I forgot it what it was I was gonna say.

Henry Jason 23:22

Oh, yes. I don't know when the Bible began to be labeled the Word of God. Protestants use it, and so do Catholics. And if Catholics have used it for centuries, if it were the Protestants who first began to use that, the Catholics would never have borrowed that usage. Sometime, I'm assuming in the Middle Ages, maybe late Middle Ages, I know the books of the Bible, as far as I've read, are never referred to as the Word of God in early Christianity, the writings of early Christians of the first two, three hundred years. I had an interest even before my interest in Quakerism and early Christianity. I wasn't using any of my Greek skills, but that's where it began to be used for things I never thought I'd use it for in terms of spirituality and religion. I'm kind of still curious as to when that started. I'm kind of guessing late Middle Ages, but I just don't know. But friends made a point that the Bible is not the word of God, it's not this logos of God. The logos of God is Jesus, Christ Jesus, and that was very clear. I've been drawn to Quakerism, especially because of what I was reading and the their interpretations, early friends' interpretations of scriptures, really just drew me to them compared to all other kinds of commentaries and things I've had been reading. And uh it still holds very true today.

Speaker 2 24:49

I have a question. How do those that hold that the Bible is the word of God deal with the what it says in what Henry read, that the word became flesh? How can they say that the Bible became flesh?

Henry Jason 25:04

Excellent point. I don't know how they do that.

Speaker 10 25:08

I'm trying to figure out how the word of God can be the expression of God. So you may have already answered this with Christ Jesus, but how can the expression of something be the thing?

Henry Jason 25:19

Oh, expressing it outwardly versus its inward nature. God is a spirit, and friends emphasize that, early friends especially, that God is a spirit. Jesus taught that God's a spirit. And that we had to worship him in spirit and truth, if you want to go to chapter four, I think, of uh this gospel. I'm not sure, Karen, what my question is.

Speaker 10 25:45

Okay, the word is supposed to be God, be God, but it's also supposed to be an expression of God. What's behind the expression?

Henry Jason 25:54

Well, okay, let's look at God as some kind of invisible energy mass. And if you look at one part of it, it looks like this. If you look at another part, it looks like that. I like the analogy so often that's brought up about the story about the five blind men touching different parts of an elephant and saying it's this or saying it's that. One's touching the tail, another one the trunk, another one its leg. And and then they they describe their um impressions, and they're all very different, but it's the same animal.

Speaker 2 26:25

In the beginning of Genesis, where it talks about God creating the earth and everything in it, the way it reads is God created it through speaking. Or if we're Quakers, we'll say God created the earth by expressing himself.

Speaker 6 26:42

Yes.

Speaker 2 26:43

It's more than language, it's I mean the whole creation, the whole earth reflects God's expressing himself.

Henry Jason 26:50

Yes, that's right. That's again, we're not taking speaking literally, but what Jack just said uh when God says something, things come into existence. And this is, of course, the logos, the word, the utterance of God, something happens. God is invisible. Again, it toss in Greek, he's unborn, that divine entity that has no birth because it's always been there and will be there and is there.

Speaker 7 27:16

He uses words, but it's beyond words. It's not just one thing like the Bible or the words, it's everything that he created, and us included, I guess. It's an expression of God.

Speaker 4 27:34

I think, and again, please push back if this is unjustified in the language, but I think in very simple, in terms of the qualities that Karen's asking about, if you go with the translation of logic, and then you just add in what's the logic of God, the logic of God is love, God is love, right? Then it sort of resolves the problem that Karen's describing.

Henry Jason 27:56

And that's right, Chris. And this gospel, I mean, God is love, God is light, God is truth. I don't know if I had a discussion with somebody here recently of oftentimes people say God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, God is all these various adjectives. But if you're using adjectives, you're kind of like describing a thing. And God is not a thing, He's a spirit. And in a sense, it might be better to say God is omniscience, God is all knowledge, God is knowledge, God is truth, God is love, rather than saying God is all loving. This is that spirit of truth, this is that spirit of love. This is the source that gets expressed in creation and time and space as this and that and everything else. And creation is an expression of God, an expression of love. Karen was just commenting on the rest of this verse. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Well, it says the word was with God. This isn't exactly the word with in Greek, it's the word pros, P-R-O-S, which has a number of meanings in Koine Greek. They're a little different than what was in earlier Greek. They can mean like opposite God or in front of God, in that sense of just being in front of God, like in being in front of a mirror, but we're talking about the same entity, so it's not like it's something separate. And then finally, in God, and the word was God. Well, this word God, in its place in the sentence, and it doesn't have the article the because when you talk about God in Greek, you use the article the because you use that with abstract nouns, as you do in French and Spanish, and Italian. I love the life, is how you'd probably say it in uh Italian and French. Uh say la vie, it's life, but they say it's the life. And this use of God here is kind of like an adjective, and the word was God. The word was divine might be a better translation into English. We use we're using that adjective there because it's without the article. This is getting deep linguistic stuff, but I just want to point out that you have to really have a powerful understanding of what's being said in the original to translate something into another language. And what may be easy to say in one language is not so easy in another. I'll bring up something too, just in terms of just because of the nature of language. Uh, some of you, I'm sure, have heard me say these things in the past, but I think I want to say for the new people as well. Languages really vary dramatically around the world. Most of the European languages are all very similar, most of them all belong to the same family of languages, the Indo-European language family, which are most of the languages of Europe and many of the languages of India and in between. But you get other language families and other kinds of things. Like if you're translating this word we in Greek, the word we, that pronoun, you know, we, us, our, there's no problem because we have a direct translation of that word into English, we. But if you go into a number of other languages, there are several different words for we. That's important to know because if you think of the English word and the Greek word, we just can mean two or more people, but there are inclusive and exclusive we's in other languages. You have words like we meaning me and you, or we meaning me and someone else, but not you, and then you have we that maybe is just two people, and we that's more than two people. So already you get like four or more different we's. Now, if you have the Greek where say in Acts it says, We then took a ship for Rome. What we do you use in your language that makes all these distinctions, that has this linguistic markedness of you must say in your language whether it's two people more than two, whether it's the speaker or not the speaker involved. And you don't know how to do that because you're not sure what the original said, because your language requires you to be specific, whereas the original Greek and English are not specific. This kind of problem comes up again and again, and I think a lot of biblical commentators aren't aware of these kinds of issues. Many languages don't have plurals. Chinese, you know, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Chinese doesn't have plurals, they only have singulars. So there's no problem translating Greek and English singular and plural because they just come out the same way in Chinese. You can express a plural if you need to in certain ways, but the language doesn't require it. And then also another important thing is that many languages, as far as I know, all the languages of Europe make tense distinctions between present, past, and future and that sort of thing. Many languages of the world do not make those kinds of distinctions in time. They make aspectual kinds of changes, differences that they mark in their languages as to when something began, whether something ended, things like that that we don't ordinarily pay any attention to in English. So I'm just pointing out all the problems in translation. And unfortunately, so much theology is so dependent on the translation, and you assume that that translation is right, it may not always be right. I look at the Russian translation of the New Testament because it didn't go through Latin, it came from Greek directly into Old Church Slavonic, and then from Old Church Slavonic into Church Slavonic, and then into Russian. So you sometimes get some very interesting differences there, oftentimes maybe more correct.

Speaker 9 33:59

Given that this gospel is uh often telling us about our inward spiritual lives, I was looking at that first verse and thinking that instead of being about something external, that it very well could be something of saying something about the human spiritual beginning of awareness rather than the beginning of space and time. What is very basic to our being, different from any other creature in the world, is that we can conceive of meaning. This might have been a way of somehow referring to that, the beginning of that was somehow God directed, that we could have a consciousness that was so unique in comparison with other creatures in the world.

Henry Jason 34:58

I think that's the kind of interpretation that direction is what we should go into. Somehow, at some point, a light turns on and you say, Oh, early friends really fought against literalness. Even some of the titles of the works they presented or got written by them against the literal bishop of York, you know, and they'll use words like that, because the whole focus is on the inward spiritual versus the outward literal physical. Everybody at that time could look at Jesus, saw a man, but not everyone saw something more than that in him, even if they experienced some of the miracles and amazing feats and wonders that Jesus did, that didn't make everyone understand something very profoundly special about Jesus.

Speaker 11 35:47

Henry, something that Pat said, this may reflect upon that. I was thinking, how were the people consuming this who were listening to it? And what kind of spiritual effect did it have on them?

Henry Jason 36:01

Oh, well, that's a good question. I mean, I if you look at the gospel according to Mark, everybody was pretty thick. Well they were. We won't get into it here, but like the sacred story about the sower of the seed, it occurs in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Even the uh disciples can't figure out what Jesus is talking about, so they ask him privately later, what did you mean by this? And he starts to explain it to them privately. But the parable is well, the word parabole in Greek is the word that means comparison. Comparison. I asked a Chinese friend and asked her how they translated it into Chinese, and she said they used the word comparison. Jesus spoke in comparisons. The kingdom of God is like this, the kingdom of God is like that. Always comparisons. You can read fancy commentaries on what a parable is, but let's get back to the simple word as to what it originally meant in the Greek and assume that was the same word that was used in Aramaic.

Speaker 8 37:07

I think also there's a good chance that this was a way to tie in the subsequent parts of this book to the original Hebrew, not necessarily literally, but to have a beginning. But instead of going through Genesis as the original Hebrew does, this is uh relating to the beginning, and yet it's done on a spiritual level rather than on a physical level.

Henry Jason 37:42

Yeah, we're going to be talking about that sort of thing, definitely. I I see uh it's it's about time for us to stop. This coming fifth day, Thursday, at the same time, 7:30 Eastern time. I will be continuing, resuming the uh session on the fundamental beliefs of conservative friends, what we are conserving. This will be session four, I believe, which runs up to an hour. Sometimes it may be much shorter. I'm still working out how to do this. It may change even more over time, hopefully giving just one spiritual topic. I want to kind of finish what we were saying last time about the inward-outward aspects of reality and the kingdom of God and go on to a new topic, repentance, and what that originally meant and what it meant to furly friends and traditional friends. Hopefully, I'll see some of you there this coming Thursday, fifth day at 7:30. Okay? All right. Well, thanks everybody.

Host 38:45

This podcast has been a production of Ohio Yearly Meeting. It was hosted by Henry Jason and edited by Kim Palmer. The introduction and credits were read by Chip Thomas. The quote in our introduction is from the Queries and Advices section of Ohio Yearly Meetings Book of Discipline. A link to that book can be found in the show notes to this episode. We welcome feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes. Contact us through our website at Ohio Yearly Meeting.org or email us at OIM Conservative at gmail.com.