GOSPEL / QUESTIONS OF BARTHOLOMEW (1st - 4th century) Questions.

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rakovsky

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The "Gospel of Bartholomew" could be the same as the "Questions of Bartholomew".
The Decree of Pope Gelasius lists "the Gospels in the name of Bartholomew" among condemned or unacceptable scriptures, and Jerome mentions a Gospel of Bartholomew among other apocryphal gospels in his prologue to Matthew. On the other hand, the Questions of Bartholomew had significant currency through the centuries, has surviving copies in Slavonic, Coptic, Latin, and Greek, and was the basis for a medieval Latin Church sermon. Fr. K. Parhomenko looks at Questions of Bartholomew and suggests it as a source for where the Orthodox Church entered into its hymnography discussions between people in Hades in connection with Christ's descent there. He also sees it as a source for the idea of Jesus' omnipresence in the theologians and hymnography. He quotes Great Saturday's hymn: "In the grave the fleshly, in hades with soul like God, and in paradise with the thief, and on the throne is Christ..." (Тайна Пасхи 4)

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia's article on Bartholomew says:
Gelasius gives the tradition that Bartholomew brought the Hebrew gospel of Matthew to India. In the "Preaching of Bartholomew in the Oasis" (compare Budge, II, 90) he is referred to as preaching probably in the oasis of Al Bahnasa, and according to the "Preaching of Andrew and Bartholomew" he labored among the Parthians (Budge, II, 183).
Topical Bible: Bartholomew
Al Bahnasa (AKA "Oxyrhynchus") is an Egyptian town where early Christian fragments have been found.

"The Apocryphal New Testament" (edited by J. K. Elliott) proposes that Questions of Bartholomew was composed in Greek, perhaps in Egypt. The "Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions" notes: "The apostle was also valued in Egypt, the place of composition of two works bearing his name: the Questions of Bartholomew and the Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew." Besides that, such dialogues (eg. between Jesus and Bartholomew) are a feature shared with gnostic apocrypha, which commonly came from Egypt or the Mideast. In "Jesus and the Gospels", R. J. Bauckham considers the Questions of Bartholomew to be a non-gnostic work.

The Questions of Bartholomew can be found here: GOSPEL OF BARTHOLOMEW
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a 5th-6th c. "Christian Neoplatonist" quoted statements by Bartholomew here: Dionysius the Areopagite: Mystical Theology
The Book of Hieratheus, often attributed to the 5th c. Syrian monastic Stephen Bar Sudhaile, says that Bartholomew wrote "As for me I glorify the Cross of mysteries (or 'of sufferings'), and I know that it is the first gate of the house of God." However, this quote is not found in Questions of Bartholomew.

(Question 1) What do you think is the date range for the Gospel or Questions of Bartholomew?

Stephen Pelle, in his essay "A Quotation from the Questions of Bartholomew in an early Medieval Latin Sermon", says that the Questions of Bartholomew was probably written between the 2nd and fourth century. (https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1484/J.APOCRA.5.103628) In the fourth century, Jerome mentioned the Gospel of Bartholomew. The "Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew" is a reworked version of the Questions of Bartholomew and is found in a 5th century list of Christian writings.

(Question 2) Do you recognize any of Mary's foreign words in bold below? Are they even meant to be real words from a known national language?

In Chapter II of the Questions of Bartholomew, Bartholomew asks Mary:
Thou that art highly favoured, the tabernacle of the Most High, unblemished we, even all the apostles, ask thee to tell us how thou didst conceive the incomprehensible, or how thou didst bear him that cannot be carried, or how thou didst bring forth so much greatness.

But Mary said unto them: Ask me not (or Do ye indeed ask me) concerning this mystery. If I should begin to tell you, fire will issue forth out of my mouth and consume all the world.

But they continued yet the more to ask her. And she, for she could not refuse to hear the apostles, said: Let us stand up in prayer.
The apostles and Mary give each other honors, like Mary saying that in the apostles' likeness "did God form the sparrows, and sent them forth into the four corners of the world", and the apostles saying to Mary, "He that is scarce contained by the seven heavens was pleased to be contained in thee."
This suggests that Mary's declaration below is in the form of a prayer and that the apostles are worthy of hearing the answer to their request of her. After the requests and her replies to the apostles,
Mary stood up before them and spread out her hands toward the heaven and began to speak thus:
Elphue Zarethra Charboum Nemioth Melitho Thraboutha Mephnounos Chemiath Aroura Maridon Elison Marmiadon Seption Hesaboutha Ennouna Saktinos Athoor Belelam Opheoth Abo Chrasar, which is in the Greek tongue (Hebrew, Slav.):
O God the exceeding great and all-wise and king of the worlds (ages), that art not to be described, the ineffable, that didst establish the greatness of the heavens and all things by a word, that out of darkness (or the unknown) didst constitute and fasten together the poles of heaven in harmony, didst bring into shape the matter that was in confusion, didst bring into order the things that were without order, didst part the misty darkness from the light, didst establish in one place the foundations of the waters, thou that makest the beings of the air to tremble, and art the fear of them that are on (or under) the earth, that didst settle the earth and not suffer it to perish, and filledst it, which is the nourisher of all things, with showers of blessing: (Son of) the Father, thou whom the seven heavens hardly contained, but who wast well-pleased to be contained without pain in me, thou that art thyself the full word of the Father in whom all things came to be: give glory to thine exceeding great name, and bid me to speak before thy holy apostles.
Out of these words, I recognize Elison ("have mercy" in Greek) and Seption (from "Seven" in Greek). Maybe the seven is related to the apostles' preceding reference to the seven heavens.
In "The Apocryphal New Testament" M.R. James notes about Mary's foreign words: "this is the reading of one Greek copy: the others and the Slavonic have many differences as in all such cases: but as the original words-assuming them to have once had a meaning-are hopelessly corrupted, the matter is not of importance."
I take this to mean that the original, Greek version has Mary give the words and adds: "which is in the Greek tongue", meaning that her foreign words are not Greek, but that the meaning is translated into Greek in the section after them.
I also take the Slavonic version's alteration to "which is in the Hebrew tongue" to mean that the Slavonic editor supposed that Mary's words were Hebrew.
My interpretation is that Mary's words are not meant to be either Greek or Hebrew. This is because Mary's other words spoken to the apostles, as well as Bartholomew's conversation with Jesus is all given in Greek. If the author imagined them to be talking Hebrew or Aramaic (which is close to Hebrew), he would not have translated all their dialogues into Greek except for Mary's brief declaration.
One possibility that comes to mind is that here Mary spoke some kind of angelic, inspirational, or prayer language when she gave her declaration - conceptually similar to how modern Pentecostals portray their "tongues", and this is why it's presented in this gibberish-like form. She had warned the apostles that there could be a fire if she told them what happened at the Incarnation, and after she tells them about the Annunciation, it says that fire came out of her mouth. This brings to mind the tongues of fire in the story of Pentecost in Acts.
Another option is that the writer meant that Mary was speaking Hebrew or Aramaic in her declaration and that the author presents the supposed original Hebrew/Aramaic words just as the canonical gospels sometimes quotes Jesus in Aramaic and then gives a translation (as in "Talitha Kum", Little Girl, Arise!).

(Question 3) Have you heard of other references in early Christian writings about angels worshiping Adam or mankind?
In Chapter 4, Satan tells Bartholomew that the reason he fell from grace was because he (Satan) refused to worship man who was the image of God:
53. I was going to and fro in the world, and God said unto Michael: Bring me a clod from the four corners of the earth, and water out of the four rivers of paradise. And when Michael brought them God formed Adam in the regions of the east, and shaped the clod which was shapeless, and stretched sinews and veins upon it and established it with Joints; and he worshipped him, himself for his own sake first, because he was the image of God, therefore he worshipped him.

54. And when I came from the ends of the earth Michael said: Worship thou the image of God, which he hath made according to his likeness. But I said: I am fire of fire, I was the first angel formed, and shall worship clay and matter?

55. And Michael saith to me: Worship, lest God be wroth with thee. But I said to him: God will not be wroth with me; but I will set my throne over against his throne, and I will be as he is. Then was God wroth with me and cast me down, having commanded the windows of heaven to be opened.

(Question 4) What do you think the 12 heads of God refers to in Chapter 4?
5. Woe unto him that sweareth by the head of God, yea woe (?) to him that sweareth falsely by him truly. For there are twelve heads of God the most high: for he is the truth, and in him is no lie, neither forswearing.
In apocalyptic literature of this period, "heads" sometimes refers to kings. So maybe the 12 heads refers to the 12 disciples who were to lead the Church?
 
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Following.

I hesitate to comment - I certainly don't have answers, only opinions on such apocrypha and in some cases of the "flavor" of the material. A few other minor thoughts. And I'm not OO.

So watching for now.
 
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dzheremi

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No, I'm sorry, it's not interesting. After what must be at least the third thread on a similar topic (some weird 'gospel' that was quoted a few times by someone, or was found in Egypt or in Coptic) in just a few days, I'm getting a little concerned that this particular poster is for some reason using the OO forum as a kind of dump for whatever weird probably gnostic crud that he can find that has the most threadbare connection to Egypt. I'm not interested in humoring this anymore, and none of it belongs here.

But just because someone who has not been posting threads full of weird voodoo crud on this forum has said that it is interesting to her, the words of "St. Mary's" supposed speech appear to be proper names, some with just slightly tweaked spelling, which should be a dead giveaway that this is nothing worth wasting your time on unless you're particularly interested in this type of thing, for some reason. Melitho is a proper name (one of the forty martyrs of Sebaste had this name, if I recall correctly), as is Athoor (a.k.a. Ashur or Atur, the pre-Christian god of the Assyrians; Ashur is still a male proper name in Eastern Assyrian/Neo-Aramaic). It would not surprise me to find that all of them are some kind of garbled Greek or Syriac, as is already suggested regarding Elison and Seption.

The point is this is a bunch of junk. Stop posting this bizarre nonsense on this subforum. If you keep doing so, Rakovsky, I will request that the mods have these threads locked or removed, because like I tried to tell you a few times ago, this stuff has no status within the OO Church, and is not connected to it just because it was found in Egypt or was quoted by somebody else (Stephen Bar Sudhaile was a heretic condemned by people who the OO do recognize, namely St. Jacob of Serugh and St. Philoxenos of Mabbug). And this forum is supposed to be about the OO Church, not "Rakovsky found something weird that was found in Egypt/was written in Coptic". So all of this is severely off-topic. The OP indicates that there are versions of this particular writing in Greek, Slavonic, and Latin, as well, so why don't post about this on the EO or RC subforums, Rakovsky? No doubt it's just as known to those people as it is to the communion that this subforum is actually supposed to be dedicated to.
 
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rakovsky

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Dear Dzheremi,
Thanks
for making a few comments about the questions, and for expressing your concerns. I think you are worried about me posting weird documents that aren't related to the Coptic Church. I have enjoyed writing with you in the past and appreciated your respectful discussions. I also like the knowledge that you bring to the table along with your familiarity of Egyptian Church history and writings. Let me better explain where I am coming from in making the posts.

My plan has been to read all the potential first century writings about Christianity, for inspiration as well as to get a good understanding with the foundational period of Christianity. Sometimes there were things in them that I didn't understand, so I decided to ask questions about them, especially with Christians from the areas where the non-gnostic ones were written. So I decided to ask about the Shepherd of Hermas (by Hermas of Rome) on the Catholic Answers forum (THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS (1st - mid 2nd century) Questions on its authenticity and doubting) and about the Epistle of Barnabas (probably from Cyprus or the Greek mediterranean) on the Monachos forum (The Epistle of Barnabas (1st. cent.) Questions. - Specific texts). And I wanted to ask about the non-gnostic 1st century Christian writings from Egypt here, because this is one of the biggest OO discussion places on the web.

I understand what you mean when you referred to their "weirdness". "Weird" supernatural accounts or ideas appear to be a major, common feature of many 1st-mid 2nd century Christian writings. Even one of the most respected and best authenticated outside of the Bible, the First Epistle of Clement of Rome, has a passage that seems to imply that the Phoenix is a real bird in Egypt that dies and resurrects. Clement next used this as an analogy for the resurrection. Think about the Shepherd of Hermas - it's a long treatise delivered in visions by a Shepherd; or John's Revelation in the Bible, which depicts the harlot of Babylon and the Beast with the mark of "666", along with plenty of other strange or curious images. Even Paul's reference in his Epistles to knowing someone who went up to the "third heaven" sounds curious. It seems like there was a whole genre of apocalyptic literature from that time with strange or curious visions, images, and concepts.

Plus, I agree that it's valuable to consider the works' status. The Apocalypse of Peter is in the Muratorian Canon, one of the oldest lists of the books of the Bible, and Clement of Alexandria accepted it, but Eusebius didn't count it as genuine. The Preaching of Peter was accepted by Clement of Alexandria, but Eusebius didn't count it as genuine either. And the Questions of Bartholomew was once widespread among the world's Christians (translated into multiple languages) and maybe contributed to the Great Saturday hymn and was quoted extensively in a medieval Latin sermon, but the decree of Pope Gelasius listed the Gospel of Bartholomew (maybe the same document) as condemned or unacceptable.

So here I am recognizing what their status is and am not trying to treat these works as major writings of the Coptic church, but rather 1st to 2nd century Christian writings from the time of the apostles and those who knew them. My hope is that they can give me better insight into the ideas of Christians at that time. I'm not implying that the Coptic Church accepts them as genuine or authoritative theologically. In fact, I am also looking for your criticisms of these early documents, if any. I thought that you already made helpful contributions without much effort. I didn't know about Melitho or Athur and didn't recognize those names, so this sheds new light for me on Mary's words in the text. Nor did I know about Stephen Bar Sudhaile's opponents whom you named. This is the kind of new, relevant information for me that gives me a better grasp of these Apostolic Age documents.

Does that make sense and help to explain better my motives for asking about the early Christian writings here, Dzheremi?
 
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dzheremi

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That's all fine, my friend. The point is that this stuff does not belong on Voice In The Desert specifically. I think you could get a better response from posting them on one of the forums specifically dealing with the development of scripture (I think there is such a subforum in the Theology section of this website), because posting them here could give a wrong impression about them, and even if it doesn't they are still off topic to the actual purpose of this subforum.
 
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rakovsky

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For Question 1 (The Dating of the Gospel of Bartholomew and Questions of Bartholomew), The Encyclopedia of the Bible's entry on the Questions of Bartholomew says:
Schneemelcher (New testament Apocrypha I. 508) conjectures that both streams of tradition[ie. for the Questions of Bartholomew and for the later Resurrection of Christ by Bartholomew) may go back to the 3rd or 4th cent. with the possibility of a shorter Gospel of Bartholomew as the starting point for the development.
Gospel [Questions] of Bartholomew - Encyclopedia of The Bible - Bible Gateway

J.K. Elliot writes in The Apocryphal New Testament (p. 652): "The Questions were originally composed in Greek, possibly in Egypt, but the date of the work is not certain, being estimated between the second and sixth centuries." Martina Chroma' in her essay "Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Questions of Bartholomew" writes that the Questions were "written most likely in Greek in the 3rd or 4th century."

Hans-Josef Klauck writes in The Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (p. 99): "It is difficult to date the 'Questions of Bartholomew'; dates from the second to the sixth century have been proposed. At any rate, the version of the harrowing of hell in this text is probably older than that in EvNic[Gospel of Nicodemus], indicating that it was composed in the second century; on the other hand, this text borrows from Protev 8:1 at 2:15, and from IGTh [Infancy Gospel of Thomas] 2 at 2:11, and this suggests a third-century date."

Klauck's answer seems the most thought-out.
 
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rakovsky

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I appreciate you, Dzheremi, helping with Question #2 (the meaning of Mary's words). I agree with your option that it wouldn't be surprising if "all of them are some kind of garbled Greek or Syriac". So many of them in a row end in -on or -os, which are typical noun endings (as in "martyrion"), that it looks like the translated terms would not be intelligible as a sentence. "-on" in Greek is a suffix that can be the neuter singular, or the masculine/feminine accusative singular.
I took Seption to come from Seven. In Greek, Seven is Epta, which seems quite different. But in Latin, seven is "Septem", which is closer. Anyway, the -on can be a suffix change resulting from declension.

Mary's speech is:
Elphue Zarethra (a place in Greece) Charboum Nemioth Melitho ("Fullness" in Syriac; a proper name, eg. one of the martyrs of Sebaste) Thraboutha Mephnounos Chemiath Aroura (Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn; a Roman metaphorical term for dawn) Maridon ("We marry" in Latin) Elison (Have mercy in Greek) Marmiadon Seption (Septem is seven in Latin, and "-on" is a Greek ending; Septum in Latin means "enclosure") Hesaboutha Ennouna Saktinos Athoor (the pre-Christian god of the Assyrians; a male proper name in Neo-Aramaic) Belelam Opheoth Abo ("Father" in West Aramaic) Chrasar
Even supposing that the words were a real Hebrew speech, when they were translated into Greek by the author, the product was far longer than the passage above, which suggests to me that the Greek translation was not the actual translation of what the words meant. Otherwise, the Greek translation would be about the same length as the potentially Hebrew passage above. So either the author was imagining Hebrew words or else he was referring to a kind of divine speech that would not normally be intelligible, similar to the way that Pentecostals explain their gibberish today.
 
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rakovsky

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For Question 3 (Have you heard of other references in early Christian writings about angels worshiping Adam or mankind?) The Life of Adam and Eve / Apocalypse of Moses is a Jewish apocryphal book likely originally composed in the first century to third centuries in a Semitic language. In it, Satan recounts to Adam that the Archangel Michael had commanded him to worship/bow to Adam as being made in God's image. Satan refused because he was created before Adam, so God cast Satan out of heaven.

Angels venerating Adam is a theme that also shows up in 2 Enoch, which may have been a Jewish text written in the first century, or as late as the tenth. The tradition also shows up in the 6th century Syriac Christian text called The Cave of Treasures.

Three rabbinical texts invert the theme of God wanting the angels to venerate Adam: In Genesis Rabbah in the Talmud, R. Hoshaya tells a midrash of how the angels wanted to bow to Adam when he was created, but God prevented them by putting Adam to sleep, thereby showing his mortality. In the Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, the angels wanted to worship Adam, but instead Adam stops them and directs them to worship God. In the Tanhuma-Yelamdenu, the archangel Michael stops them from worshiping Adam and quotes Isaiah 2:22: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?"
 
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dzheremi

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Hi Rakovsky. I've never personally read the Cave of Treasures (well, only some brief quotations of it in other works/academic sources), but I have heard that the veneration of Adam by angels showed up in Islamic sources via Arabic translations of Syriac texts. We know that this happened with regard to the Syriac Infancy Gospel, which is actually found in a garbled form in the Qur'an itself (see the comparison here, from wiki), and apparently there are other sources (I can't remember if they're also Qur'anic or hadith) in Islam wherein Adam is given or requested by Allah to be given veneration. So in a strange way, you might find more traces of earlier Christian and Jewish apocryphal writings by looking into Islamic sources than you'd find by looking into the Oriental Orthodox Churches themselves, as texts like the Cave of Treasures are obviously not canonical (though it's found in Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian), and that particular book as far as I understand it tended to be more popular with the Nestorians than with the Syriac Orthodox (though its traditional -- false -- attribution to St. Ephrem would've probably given it wide currency in early Syriac Christianity, since Ephrem is definitely the most 'pan-Syrian' of saints from the time when the book was originally thought to have been written; it's only subsequent scholarship many centuries later that has pushed its date forward to the 6th century).
 
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~Anastasia~

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Hi Rakovsky. I've never personally read the Cave of Treasures (well, only some brief quotations of it in other works/academic sources), but I have heard that the veneration of Adam by angels showed up in Islamic sources via Arabic translations of Syriac texts. We know that this happened with regard to the Syriac Infancy Gospel, which is actually found in a garbled form in the Qur'an itself (see the comparison here, from wiki), and apparently there are other sources (I can't remember if they're also Qur'anic or hadith) in Islam wherein Adam is given or requested by Allah to be given veneration. So in a strange way, you might find more traces of earlier Christian and Jewish apocryphal writings by looking into Islamic sources than you'd find by looking into the Oriental Orthodox Churches themselves, as texts like the Cave of Treasures are obviously not canonical (though it's found in Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian), and that particular book as far as I understand it tended to be more popular with the Nestorians than with the Syriac Orthodox (though its traditional -- false -- attribution to St. Ephrem would've probably given it wide currency in early Syriac Christianity, since Ephrem is definitely the most 'pan-Syrian' of saints from the time when the book was originally thought to have been written; it's only subsequent scholarship many centuries later that has pushed its date forward to the 6th century).
Just following with interest and no knowledge ... but it strikes me if the Muslims believe Allah said Adam should be venerated ... and the iconoclast controversy in EO is said to be somewhat caused by Islamic objections (which I think are more based in portraying Christ but I think veneration was part of it?).

Just curious to me. I know nothing lol.
 
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dzheremi

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Just following with interest and no knowledge ... but it strikes me if the Muslims believe Allah said Adam should be venerated ... and the iconoclast controversy in EO is said to be somewhat caused by Islamic objections (which I think are more based in portraying Christ but I think veneration was part of it?).

Just curious to me. I know nothing lol.

While I don't really want to turn this thread into a discussion on that, I just did a bit of looking since I couldn't remember earlier, and turns out it's in the Qur'an, in Sura al Baqarah ("The Cow" chapter), verse 34 --

And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.

The relevant verb, usjudu, is indeed a form of the verb sujud (سجد -- prostrate, worship). For instance, we respond in parts of the liturgy "Nesjudulek ayouhal Masih" -- "We worship You, O Christ", and this is of course exactly the sort of thing Islam condemns us as "associators" (committers of shirk, "association of other with Allah") for doing.

So, yes...very interesting, isn't it? :scratch:
 
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rakovsky

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For Question 4, (what are the twelve heads of God in Chapter VI) I think that since in ancient Apocalyptic literature "heads" commonly refers to kingdoms or leaders, and the hostile heads of the beasts in Daniel and Revelation refer to hostile foreign kingdoms or rulers, then the 12 "heads" of God would refer to kingdoms or rulers belonging to God. Since the heads of Israel are twelve patriarchs, and the 12 apostles were heads of the Church, Christ's "body", then the 12 apostles would metaphorically or spiritually be "heads" of Christ's "body", the Church. In Matthew 5, on which the passage in question must be based, Jesus tells the 12 apostles not to swear by their heads. A rule directed to the 12 apostles against swearing by their heads would fit with a rule against swearing by God's head that is justified by the concept of God having twelve "heads" (the apostles).
 
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dzheremi

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I don't know anything about this text beyond what you have so far provided, but any time I see twelve mentioned in any early Christian writing, I would automatically assume it is some type of allusion to the apostles, however obscure.
 
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rakovsky

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While I don't really want to turn this thread into a discussion on that, I just did a bit of looking since I couldn't remember earlier, and turns out it's in the Qur'an, in Sura al Baqarah ("The Cow" chapter), verse 34 --

And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.

The relevant verb, usjudu, is indeed a form of the verb sujud (سجد -- prostrate, worship). For instance, we respond in parts of the liturgy "Nesjudulek ayouhal Masih" -- "We worship You, O Christ", and this is of course exactly the sort of thing Islam condemns us as "associators" (committers of shirk, "association of other with Allah") for doing.

So, yes...very interesting, isn't it? :scratch:
Anastasia and Dzheremi,
I agree that it is an interesting issue. It gets into one of the signs that Jesus was God - that Christ allowed people to prostrate to Him (eg. Luke 17:16: "...he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan." Matthew 8:2: "And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, 'Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.'"), "bowing" being an expression for worship.

They have basically two counterarguments against this evidence. One is that the word in Greek for "bow down" or "worship" does not necessarily mean "worship". They claim that the word literally means "bow down" and only sometimes could be used to signify "worship". The Islamic "Answering Christianity" website makes the claim: "the Greek word used for what the Biblical editors mistranslate as "Worshipped" is 'prosekunesan'. It is derived from 'proskuneo' (Strong's 4352), which literally means bow, crouch, crawl, kneel or prostrate." Their other counteragument is that sometimes in the Bible people bow to figures who are not God. Joseph's brothers bowed to Joseph when he was a leading Egyptian political figure, then in 1 Samuel 24, David bows to King Saul, and in 2 Samuel 14, "When the woman from Tekoa went to the king, she fell with her face to the ground to pay him honor, and she said, 'Help me, O king!'" In that same chapter, "Joab fell with his face to the ground to pay him honor, and he blessed the king."

While these counterarguments make sense, I think that the New Testament writers want to make bowing down a reference to divine worship. In the story of the Temptation, Satan tries to get Christ to bow to Satan, and Christ replies that bowing is to be done to God alone. The New Testament doesn't get into issues of whether it can be permissable to bow to secular or foreign kings or whether Christ was talking about just one use of the Greek word for bowing. So I think that there is ambiguity in the issue if one was to take the New Testament alone. This is because the New Testament was not meant as a grammar book or as a book of detailed Canon Law like "The Rudder".
 
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dzheremi

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Anastasia and Dzheremi,
I agree that it is an interesting issue. It gets into one of the signs that Jesus was God - that Christ allowed people to prostrate to Him (eg. Luke 17:16: "...he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan." Matthew 8:2: "And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, 'Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.'"), "bowing" being an expression for worship.

They have basically two counterarguments against this evidence. One is that the word in Greek for "bow down" or "worship" does not necessarily mean "worship". They claim that the word literally means "bow down" and only sometimes could be used to signify "worship". The Islamic "Answering Christianity" website makes the claim: "the Greek word used for what the Biblical editors mistranslate as "Worshipped" is 'prosekunesan'. It is derived from 'proskuneo' (Strong's 4352), which literally means bow, crouch, crawl, kneel or prostrate." Their other counteragument is that sometimes in the Bible people bow to figures who are not God. Joseph's brothers bowed to Joseph when he was a leading Egyptian political figure, then in 1 Samuel 24, David bows to King Saul, and in 2 Samuel 14, "When the woman from Tekoa went to the king, she fell with her face to the ground to pay him honor, and she said, 'Help me, O king!'" In that same chapter, "Joab fell with his face to the ground to pay him honor, and he blessed the king."

While these counterarguments make sense, I think that the New Testament writers want to make bowing down a reference to divine worship.

Traditional Jewish worship as it would have been practiced in the Middle East would've surely included prostrations, as it still does:


So I don't even know if it is entirely appropriate (or inappropriate, for that matter) to say that the NT writers wanted to make bowing down a reference to divine worship. I think that association was already there, as prostration is the posture of submission before authority in the East (akin to kneeling/genuflection in the West), and there is no higher authority than God. And remember that the earthly authorities traditionally derived their power from God, so there really is no contradiction between prostrating before a king in that capacity and prostrating before God in worship; it is the same motion because our Holy Scriptures tell us to submit to authorities (Romans 13). That Islam did not preserve that understanding (because it couldn't, because of course Muhammad's religious system was in opposition to the authorities of his day, since they were polytheistic pagans), and hence they have to play with words to defend their religion or defame ours, is not our problem. That's Islam's problem.
 
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rakovsky

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You brought up a good point about ancient ideas of kings' power deriving from God's power. Even Nebudchadnezzar in the Old Testament is referred to as an "anointed" one.

I don't know that one can easily make a systemic consistent theory about terms of bowing and worshiping. For example, if we are going to say that one should bow to sovereigns because their power derives from God, then what about government officials like Joseph who were appointed by such kings? And then if we say that any government official should get bowed to, then what have we done to the point of Jesus' declaration that a person should only bow down to God? Are we to make this into a theory that Jesus' statement implies that a person should bow down to both God and the rulers whom he appointed and the officials whom they appointed? Well, God appointed Adam or Mankind to be master of the earth. And maybe God appointed angels over some things, like the Commander of God's Armies (God, the Logos in particular, or St. Michael?). So then are we to take Jesus' statement to imply bowing to God, Adam or Mankind, earthly rulers, and government officials? Already we would be really weakening Jesus' declaration that He was directing polemically against bowing to anyone but God. And then we have the issue that Joshua bowed to the Commander of God's Armies, but then in Revelation 22:8-9, the angel that the apostle John bowed to stopped John, saying that he was John's fellow servant.

So I am not denying your theory, but I think it's hard to make a consistent, easy, systemic theory about the bowing, other than that in the New Testament in particular, bowing is especially reserved for God, and this in turn is a sign that Jesus is considered God.
 
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dzheremi

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I wasn't really meaning to make a theory or to suggest anything we should do from it, only to point out that this was likely the understanding at the time, given the Jewish form of worship and the fact that we do see instances of kings being prostrated before or bowed to in the scriptures. That doesn't mean it is appropriate in every case or in every culture. I certainly not be bowing down to President Trump or future President Sanders or whoever else, because of course American society in which I live does not have this association of secular power and the power of God working together, due to the particularly modern western understanding of secularism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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rakovsky

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Plus, if we want to make the theory that Jesus was shown to be God due to people bowing to Jesus, but then we open legitimate objects of bowing to kings on the basis that kings get authority from God; Then in turn we have undermined our argument for bowing being a special sign of divinity, since the "Messiah" is considered even in rabbinical Judaism to be a "king", whose authority comes from God.

Maybe there are cases though of people bowing to the apostles who are the heads of the Church, like people might bow to a bishop, meaning "overseer" in the Bible. This is why it's hard to make consistent theory of all this I think.

Supposing that John wrote Revelation 12 based on the Vita (Life of Adam and Eve), it's noteworthy that he left out the issue of whether God wanted the angels to bow to the original Adam, which is part of the Vita. My guess is that it's not an easy issue.
 
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