If by "serious work" you mean mainstream scholarship, that would be accurate, and I don't expect to see anything like that happening anytime soon either. It is simply too easy on a surface level to dismiss this text out of hand as a Greek back-translation with some fanciful Jewish minded variants inserted into the text. However there are some variants, and they may sound to be pretty wild on the surface, but which after inspection end up being scriptural and possibly even scripture quotations and references.
Another example of such is the word used in the place of Wormwood in Rev 8:11, where we read, "And the name of the star was Scarlet", and that word for Scarlet, used here as a proper noun, is
תולעת, (H8438 towla'), the color of the red dye made from the scarlet grub worm, and is used in the scripture for both the color of the dye and the worm itself. The most notable prophetic instance where this may be found in the scripture would be Isaiah 14:10-12.
Isaiah 14:10-12 LSV
10 All of them answer and say to you, Even you have become weak like us! You have become like to us!
11 Your excellence has been brought down to Sheol, || The noise of your stringed instruments, || The worm has been spread out under you, || Indeed,
the worm [תולעה] is covering you.
12
How you have fallen from the heavens, || O shining one, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to earth, || O weakener of nations.
Thus in the Hebrew Apocalypse we have a red star fallen from the heavens who is named Scarlet, or Worm, or Towla' which means the same. Did "Worm" then later become a word that meant "Wormwood" in the Greek text rendered into Latin or even as late as English? This is more possible than most would probably like to imagine, but as we see, if this be the case, the original meaning of the text has been lost. It may indeed be a reference to Isaiah 14:11-12.
Rev 8:8 tells us by the Testimony of the Master that the above is indeed in full agreement with the things being spoken about in this passage.
Matthew 17:18-21 KJV
18 And Jesus rebuked the
devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said,
Why could not we cast him out?
20 And Jesus said unto them,
Because of your unbelief:
for verily I say unto you,
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place;
and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
21
Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Building on this premise and teaching he then says:
Matthew 21:18-21 KJV
18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.
19 And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
20 And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!
21
Jesus answered and said unto them,
Verily I say unto you,
If ye have faith,
and doubt not,
ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree,
but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
We see exactly this in the Apocalypse, in the same place where we read of the Star called Scarlet-Worm:
Revelation 8:8 KJV
8 And the second angel sounded,
and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
Enoch XVIII:11-16 (R.H. Charles 1917)
11. And I saw a deep abyss, with columns ⌈⌈of heavenly fire, and among them I saw columns⌉⌉ of fire fall, which were beyond measure alike towards the height and towards the depth.
12. And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it: there was no water upon it, and no birds, but it was a waste and horrible place.
13.
I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, and to me, when I inquired regarding them,
14. The angel said: 'This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven.
15. And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times.
16. And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt should be consummated (even) ⌈for ten thousand years⌉.'
The Book of Enoch, by R.H. Charles, [1917], full text etext at sacred-texts.com
sacred-texts.com
As with all things scripture: there are
good mountains, (Mount Horeb the mountain of Elohim, Mount Tzion, etc.), and there are
evil mountains, and the evil are devils, demons, and fallen ones, according to the Logos-understanding of the Testimony of the Master, (the Matthew passages quoted above herein, Mat 17:20-21, Mat 21:21), and these things were not even so much new when they were spoken but the correct understanding thereof was new, that is, the righteous and true understanding freely given in his Testimony in those Matthew passages.
Faith like a mustard seed to
move mountains is not speaking of moving literal physical mountains by faith: it is about casting out evil, devils, demons, and fallen ones, which
genos or kind will not go out except with prayer and fasting, (but some say that fasting has been added to the text: investigate the companion statement in Mark 9:29, for some manuscripts entirely omit Mat 17:21 due to the high probability that at one point a scribe either did not understand the Testimony or a line simply got skipped by mistake, (more likely intentionally omitted due to ignorance of the meaning of the passage)).
