AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY
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Copyright
Notice
As the basis for my work I have used the
Nestlé-Aland 26th Edition Greek text. Copyright on this is reserved as
follows :
..... Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestlé-Aland 26th edition
(c)1979, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart;
..... The Greek New
Testament, 3rd edition (c) 1975, United Bible Societies, London
This is the
Greek text underlying most modern English translations since 1881, including
the New American Standard and New International Versions. Certain words within
the Nestlé text proper are enclosed in square brackets [ ] or double
brackets [[ ]]. These reflect those places where the critical text editors
consider the inclusion or omission of such text to be in question.
This
text is only available for NON-COMMERCIAL personal/scholarly and educational
use.
I have also used the CATSS LXX editions of the Septuagint Old Testament
prepared by the TLG (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) Project directed by T. Brunner
at the University of California, Irvine and made available through the Center
for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT) at the University of Pennsylvania 'for
the use of students, teachers and scholars in study and education
contexts'.
This text is only available for NON-COMMERCIAL
personal/scholarly and educational use.
Unless otherwise noted, the remainder of what is presented in this
document is my original work. Copyright on this is reserved as follows
:
..... Authentic Christianity, 4th edition : (c) 2001 - 2004, Target
Technical, York, UK
All rights are reserved - except that this text
is made available without charge for NON-COMMERCIAL personal/scholarly and
educational use.
14.1
Introduction
That most curious of scriptural trifles,
'stathr' (a standard coin),
is mentioned just once in the whole of what we know as the 'New Testament' - in
the gospel attributed to Matthew. This happens upon Jesus' return to Capernaum,
the mythical seaside settlement first introduced at Mt.4:13. Following an
exchange with Peter about liability to tax, we find Jesus saying this :
Judaeo-Christian scripture is littered with riddles - and surely this is one of them. Many have puzzled over its meaning, but few with much to show for it. The Greek word 'stathr' (a standard) is derived from the verb 'isthmi' (I stand). It is therefore the name for a standard coin, commonly of silver or gold. At the literal level, it may refer here to the Jewish shekel. Another possibility is the Greek tetradrachmon coin [4 drachma]. If the latter, then this would explain how, for two people, it could pay the didrachma tax [2 drachma] just mentioned at Mt.17:24. As much is well known : but there is more to the verse than this.
Look, the directions given resemble those for a 'treasure hunt'. Now a gospel is a written message : any directions it contains are directions to the reader. But what is the locus for the search defined here ? Where is this fishing expedition to take place ? Well, there is only one tangible locus accessible equally to the author and to his readers and this is the text itself. So could it be that the author of this gospel has hidden a 'stathr' somewhere in what he has written - and that we (as readers) are expected to look for it ? And how very strangely this riddle is posed ... should we really expect to find the coin in the mouth of a fish ?
I have shown elsewhere how the major 'currency' riddles of the gospels (Talents, Minas and Drachmas) are constituted to teach the anagram techniques extensively embraced by the authors of scripture {unpublished as at May 2004}. This compact but impressive riddle seems to fit the same pattern.
And in all that follows do not forget the purpose declared for this fishing trip. It is 'so that we may not cause them to stumble'. Then a key function of this riddle may be to keep us from error. Some 1600 years ago Augustine of Hippo wrote in his classic 'De Doctrina Christiana' (About Christian Doctrine) :
Then if we can penetrate this riddle it may have a rôle to play in saving us from being 'caught out' - from being led astray by the literal import which a hasty or shallow reader may so easily derive from the text of the gospels. For the use of riddle techniques does provide for a casual reader to reach one particular conclusion - whilst the reader who can solve the riddles, gaining an extra perspective, may then arrive at an understanding altogether different - even contrary. Such a compositional method may be known by the term 'gnostic', calling to mind the dualistic concept introduced in the book of Genesis - with the 'tree of knowing the knowledge of good and evil' [Gn.2:9].
Then let us embrace the challenge posed here - and see what we can learn.
14.2 The Meaning of
'Opening its Mouth'
To explain this properly I must first
quote from the Hebrew text of the Book of Genesis. Remember that Hebrew is
written from right to left and ignore the vowel marks below the main characters
(absent in all early texts). At Gn.4:8 Cain has killed Abel, his 'brother'. Now
'God' (Hebr: YHWH) speaks to Cain in these terms :
There is a word play here which appears to work like this. In Hebrew (here transliterated) :
Accordingly it is valid to say that "A voice of the blood ... cries to me from the earth" - "the earth which has opened a mouth to receive the blood of your brother from your hand". For now, whenever the word 'earth' crops up in the subsequent texts of Hebrew scripture, it will always be liable to 'open its mouth' - with the sound of the word 'blood' emerging in its midst.
Attention is drawn here to what is actually a form of anagrammatic dispersion. A first word 'opens its mouth' - and listen ! We 'hear' a second word embedded within it. In our culture wordplays of this sort are mostly confined to puzzle books for children [and in that connection see Mt.18:2 seq:]. But this simple principle is amongst the techniques established here in the Hebrew 'Genesis'. Later (from the third century BCE) the same principle was transferred to the Greek texts of scripture - even extended and elaborated, for example by reversing or scrambling the letter sequence of the embedded word(s).
The word 'stoma' (mouth) emerges from the "surplus" of the word 'perisseumatos' (of surplus). This is typical of the way language is used in the gospels.
14.3 A Computer
Method
In the gospel story Jesus chooses the fishermen
Peter and Andrew, James and John to be his disciples (his 'students')
[Mt.4:18-22]. On the face of things they are professional fishermen - which
Jesus is not. But despite their expertise, as the narrative unfolds they
struggle to find any 'fish'. Those familiar with fishing in the Levant will
know that it is mostly done at night. But in the gospels no fish are caught at
night [Lk.5:5; Jn.21:3] - only when Jesus is around and/or when
the sun is up. This is a deliberate feature of the myth -
emphasising that Jesus is 'the light' [Jn.1:4; 8:12]. Indeed dark/light
dualism has its origin in the first few verses of 'Genesis' and is maintained
consistently in subsequent scripture. Thus it is Jesus' perspective that "no
one is able to work at night" [Jn.9:4].
It seems that these 'daylight' fish are something a little different from what we normally understand by the term. But when the disciples follow the suggestions made by Jesus, their nets are soon filled [Lk.5:4; Jn.21:3]. So we face this question : what is meant in the gospels by the term 'fish' ?
In the Greek texts of the four gospels only a handful of words employ the consonantal letter pair (the digram) 'cq' [ch.th]. Prominent amongst these are the short words 'icqus' = fish (21 times) and 'ecqros / ecqra' = enemy / enmity (17 times). Both these words are found in the first three chapters of 'Genesis'. By solving some of the numerical riddles around the repeated gospel stories of the 'Feeding of the Multitudes', I showed at www.authentic-christianity.org Chapter 3 that the authors appear to use the term 'fish' to refer to the digram 'cq' itself - or more generally to any word containing the two letters 'c' and 'q'. For now I shall proceed on this basis.
Here in the gospel we are looking for a 'fish' which has something particular 'in its mouth'. From what is explained in the previous section we may suspect that the riddle relies upon some form of combinational anagram implemented in the text itself. In our age a computer is an excellent tool for those seeking to resolve such puzzles. With it the whole text of the Greek 'New Testament' [GNT] may be searched for a specified word - either as a literal string or concealed as an anagram. Such a search may be completed in less than one second. For a quick result I chose this method first.
I began by locating all words which exhibit the pair 'c...q'. In this gospel alone (Matthew) there are sixty-four - including 'sabacqani', the last word uttered in Hebrew by Jesus dying on the cross [Mt.27:46]. But if these are the 'fish', then which is the one we want ? I reasoned that a 'fish' [cq] which has swallowed a 'standard' [stathra] could be a word which comprises the letters 'c...q' (so making it 'fishy') as well as all the letters of the word 'stathra' (a 'standard').
Searching now for any word with all of the letters 'cq.stathra', the surprising result was this. There is only one word in the whole Greek 'New Testament' which incorporates all of these letters. Then we have a singular solution - in golfing parlance, 'a hole in one' ?
Do you see it ? Here is a 'fishy' word [c...q] - with a 'standard' [stathra] as we might say "in its mouth". Indeed the coin does seem to have been 'digested' inside the fish, for the letters are all mixed up.
Now this word 'cortasqhsontai' is from the future tense of the verb 'cortazw' (I fodder). Derived from the noun 'cortos' (grass), it means 'to feed with grass (or with hay)'. Notice that this is a verb used for feeding animals - with food which grows in the light. Significantly it is used here - as in the gospel stories of the 'Feeding of the 5000/4000' where we find the word 'ecortasqhsan' (they were foddered). At each of the five episodes which appear in the synoptic gospels this is the word used [eg. Mt.14:20; 15:37]. And of course both 'bread' and 'fish' do take a key rôle in the narrative of the feeding stories, turning us back to the connection with fish.
Now perhaps you think that :
On the first two points you can decide for yourself. I have sought to keep an open mind, working as carefully as I can with the evidence of the texts. The challenge is to know the mind and the method of the scriptural author. The word 'cortasqhsontai' is an anagram source for the full word 'icqus' (fish) where the letter 'u' appears to have been replaced by the word 'stathra', and three additional characters added to form the full word. And then, if we write it again 'cortasqhsontai', we can see that between the letters 'c' and 'q' lie the letters 'ortas'. Slightly rearranged, these yield 'artos' (bread). Thus are the crowds foddered - with bread and with fish [Mt.14:20; 15:37]. The gospel authors write with the benefit of a tradition which really is quite clever - though translation to another language will be certain to obscure much of what they have done.
But with the last point I surely agree. The author of this gospel could never have expected his readers to perform a raw anagram search right through the whole gospel : it would have taken far too long. So let us instead approach the problem as a reader of the first century might have done. Let us start again, this time just following the steps set out in the gospel narrative.
Matthew | |
---|---|
5:6 <cortasqhsontai> | they shall be foddered |
14:1 <tetraarchs> | Tetrarch |
17:27 <stathra> | a 'standard' |
18:10 <katafronhshte> | despise |
21:37 <entraphsontai> | they will respect |
22:6 <krathsantes> | seizing |
26:48 <krathsate> | seize |
26:55 <ekrathsate> | you seized |
26:57 <krathsantes> | seizing |
Table 1 : Anagram sources for 'stathra' in Matthew's gospel
But apart from the first these are not 'fishy' words.14.5 Some
Implications ?
As noted above, the word 'cortasqhsontai' (they shall be foddered)
is from the future tense of the verb 'cortazw', meaning 'to feed with grass (or with
hay)'. Then it is interesting that in Luke's gospel the sign for the
shepherds should be 'brefos' (a foetus) 'keimenon en fatnh' (lying
in a feed trough) [Lk.2:12].
14.6 The
Background
There is rather more to a 'gospel' than may,
at first, meet the eye. The fish [icqus] and the
serpent [ofis] are the creatures (respectively) of the
water and of the dry land. They have their origin
in scripture at LXX Gn.1:9 (Day 3) where (in preparing for their formation) we
hear this said :
----- o -----
This PERSON, 'made
according to the image of a god', is 'male and female' (twins or
androgynous ?) and is to 'fill the earth and LORD over it'. Does that explain the virgin
birth [Is.8:3; Mt.1:23], the 'bridegroom' and the 'bride' [Is.62:5; Jn.3:29],
and Mt.12:8 ?
----- o -----
Now how does this contribute towards the aim 'that we may not cause them to stumble' ? Perhaps you are beginning to see. For to assess things correctly, first we must work out who's who - and what's what.
Without resolving the riddles, we may be all at sea. There are plenty of fish around - but we cannot catch any.
But as the riddles resolve, everything begins to fall into place. The nets fill up. And total amazement may envelope us. Yes, the authors of scripture were quite clever. And no, scripture is not the same thing as history.
----- o -----
Perhaps you will see that 'every grass spreading seed to propagate' [Gn.1:29] may refer both to wheat [Mt.13:25] and to barley [Jn.6:9] - from which in mills [Rv.18:21-22] is derived flour [Gn.18:6; Mt.13:33] and then bread [1Cor.11:23]. And the 'tree which has within itself fruit (having) seed to propagate' [Gn.1:29] may refer to the vine [Jn.15:1] yielding grapes [Rv.14:18] from which is derived the wine [Jn.2:9].
Then at Gn.9:20 'kai hrxato nwe anqrwpos gewrgos ghs kai efuteusen ampelwna' (And Noe began [as] a person, an earthworker of earth, and he planted a vineyard). In the story he wastes no time in getting drunk - and Ham is alert enough 'to see the nakedness of his father' [Gn.9:21-22]. By contrast Shem and Japheth 'went in backwardly appearing [Gk: opisqofanws]' - and 'covered the nakedness of their father' [Gn.9:23]. We are left to realise that the cover-up executed by the two brothers may the work of the serpent [Gk: ofis] - who would prefer his nakedness not to be exposed !
After the slaughter [Gn.14:17], it is Melchizedek who brings 'bread and wine' [Gn.14:18]. He is equated with the 'king of Sodom' [Gn.14:21].
Within the convention of the authors, these 'fruits of the earth' seem to be the symbols of 'excess' [ perisseuma @ Lk.6:45 ] - and of the 'lord' himself, whose creation is reported at Gn.1:27. But 'green grass' [Mk.6:39; Rv.8:7] is to be the fodder for his creatures [Gn.1:30] - wild beasts [Mk.1:13], birds [Mk.1:10], and creeping things [Jn.3:14].
Notice that 'fruits of the earth' are also the trait of Cain - another 'worker of the earth' who brings these things as his 'sacrifice for the lord' [Gn.4:3].
Cain [ kain ] is a satanic figure. The name Cain appears embedded in the title 'The New Testament' [ h kainh diaqhkh @ 1Cor.11:25; Lk.22:20 ]. At Gn.4:8 he is 'resurrected upon Abel, his brother, and he killed him'.
14.7
PostScript
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