The apostles part four

8)*Matthew: Matthew 9:9, Matthew 10:3, Mark3:18,  Luke 6:15, Acts 1:13

The book of Matthew never uses the name Levi. However, the apostle Matthew is called the tax collector. John and Paul do not mention Matthew.

*Levi: Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27, 29

Levi is called a tax collector in Mark and Luke. However, he is not associated with Matthew in those books and Matthew is not called a tax collector in those books. Matthew, John, and Paul do not talk of a disciple named Levi. The Old Testament Levi is also mentioned in a few places in the New Testament.

Read about Matthew here.

9) *James the son of Alphaeus: Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15, Acts 1:13

There is not much to say about James the son of Alphaeus. He only appears in the lists of apostles. John and Paul do not mention him. In Mark 2:14, Levi is also called the son of Alphaeus.

*James the less, brother of Joses and Salome, son of Mary: Mark 15:40

Here's where things get complicated. Was James the less the same James as the son of Alphaeus? Then who was Mary his mother? Wouldn't she have been the wife of Alphaeus? Was it the Mary mentioned as being Jesus's mother, as well as the mother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon, in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3? Which Mary was the mother of James and Joses mentioned in Matthew 27:56? What about the Mary, mother of Joses, who went to the tomb of Jesus with Mary Magdalene?  Are all these Marys, Jameses, and Joseses the same people? Some people think so. I haven't a clue. Plus, I don't think it's possible to know for sure who is who. Isn't possible that Joseph the carpenter died and Jesus's mother Mary remarried a man named Alphaeus?

Read more about James the son of Alphaeus.

10)* Simon the Zealot (NIV): Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15 Acts 1:13
*Simon the Canaanite ((KJV): Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18
*Simon Zelotes (KJV): Luke 6:15, Acts 1:13

John and Paul do not mention this Simon.

Read more about Simon the Zealot.

More to come.

Mark part five

If we look more closely at the list of the twelve apostles mentioned in Mark chapter three, we see that Levi the tax collector is not mentioned. However, in Matthew 10:3, we are told that Matthew was the tax collector. Are Levi and Matthew the same person as is traditionally said? Let's look at each gospel account.

Mark chapter two says Levi is the "son of Alphaeus" and a tax collector. He follows Jesus. Jesus eats with him. The name Levi is no where else in Mark. In chapter three, Matthew is named as one of the twelve, but Mark does not say Matthew was a tax collector. Matthew is nowhere else in the book of Mark. Oddly enough, The author calls another one of the twelve "James the son of Alphaeus." Were James and Levi brothers? There is no mention of Alphaeus again in the book of Mark.

Matthew chapter 10 mentions Matthew the tax collector and James the son of Alphaeus. Matthew does not mention the name Levi at all in the whole book. He tells the same story of the tax collector, in chapter 9, but uses the name Matthew instead. The author of Matthew does not call the tax collector the son of Alphaeus. Matthew is not mentioned any more in the rest of the book of Matthew, neither is Alphaeus. You would think that if the book of Matthew was actually written by Matthew, he would have injected himself into the story more.

Luke speaks of Levi the tax collector in chapter five. He is not called the son of Alphaeus. Matthew is mentioned as one of the twelve in chapter six, but is not called a tax collector. James the son of Alphaeus is listed as one of the twelve. Alphaeus is not mentioned again in Luke, neither is Levi or Matthew.

Acts chapter one also names the twelve apostles. It does not mention the name Levi. It names Matthew and James, the son of Alphaeus. There is no other mention of Matthew or Alphaeus in Acts. There are no other instances of Levi the tax collector, Matthew, or Alphaeus in the whole rest of the New Testament. Paul does not mention any of them either.

Now let's look at another of the twelve mentioned in Mark 3, Thaddaeus. In the KJV, Matthew 10 says his name was Lebbaeus with the last name of Thaddaeus. The NIV and other translations only say Thaddaeus. Neither Lebbaeus or Thaddaeus are mentioned elsewhere in the bible. Luke 6 lists a "Judas SON of James" in the NIV instead of Thaddaeus, and so does Acts chapter one. The KJV calls this person in Luke and Acts "Judas the BROTHER of James." The Greek actually looks like "Judas of James." It seems that Judas's relationship to James is actually unclear. Most commentaries tend to assume that all these names, Lebbaeus, Thaddaeus, and Judas were the same person.

A Judas is also mentioned in Matthew 13:55 as one of the brothers of Jesus. Some people think this Judas is the same person as above and the author of the book of Jude. Though that seems problematic to me, considering Judas and Thaddaeus are supposed to be the same person and Thaddaeus is mentioned in Matthew 10.

A Judas is mentioned once more in John 14:22. This Judas asks Jesus why he will reveal himself to just the apostles and not the whole world. This Judas is also assumed to be the apostle. Paul does not mention any Judas.


Are we confused yet?

Mark part four

We are in the second half of Mark chapter two. Jesus now has five disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, John, and Levi. Levi is a tax collector. In verse 15, we find Jesus at Levi's house eating with many tax collectors and "sinners." Three times sinners are mentioned in this passage and all three times the word is put in quotation marks with no explanation for that. My study bible also says that these sinners were "notoriously evil people" like adulterers and robbers. It is also unclear how that conclusion was arrived at.

The pharisees apparently saw Jesus eating with these social outcasts and criticized it. How did they see that? Was everyone eating outside? Were the Pharisees looking in the windows? Jesus's defense against the pharisees charges was that he was not there to call the righteous, but the sinners.

Next, we are told that John's disciples and the pharisees were fasting, which probably made them cranky. The story doesn't say the occasion of the fast, but it was presumably religious. People wanted to know why Jesus and his disciples were not fasting. Jesus uses a metaphor to say they don't need to fast because he is with them, when he is gone then they will fast. He's special. Then Jesus makes another metaphor about old wine skins and new wine skins, which, to me, makes no sense at all in this context.

The next story takes place on a sabbath. Jesus and his disciples are walking through grain fields and the disciples begin picking heads of grain, presumably to eat. The pharisees, who must have been walking with them, tattle to Jesus, saying what the disciples are doing is unlawful on the sabbath. Jesus then gives an example of David breaking the mosaic law when he was hungry. He says "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." Yeah, right. That is why god gave a death penalty for breaking the Sabbath. The story of David breaking the law and getting away with it only proves that no one was willing to kill him for that transgression, if it actually happened. In fact, throughout history, Jews have been reluctant to carry out all the various death penalties mentioned in the law of Moses.

Chapter three tell us that "another time he went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there." Jesus was watched carefully to see if he would heal the man on the sabbath. Of course, Jesus bucked convention and healed the man's hand with a great deal of show. Apparently these healings did not impress the pharisees, because they began to plot Jesus's death. I wonder how the pharisees would have told this story. Did they think Jesus was a charlatan? Or were they actually so mean hearted as to prefer Jesus's death over his miraculous healings?

In chapter 3, verses 7-12, Jesus is being followed by crowds of people from all over the region, because of the healings. Demon possessed people are falling down before him and calling him the son of god, but he is adamant that they should not tell anyone.  It does not say he exorcised all those demons. If he did, why would he have to tell them to shut up? Because of all the crowds, Jesus had a boat ready to take him away, at the sea of Galilee.

In verse 13, Jesus decides to take a few select people with him up on a mountainside. There he selects his twelve apostles. We've only read of five up to now. The twelve are Simon, who we are told Jesus names Peter, which means "pebble." Does this say something about Peter's personality? There are also James and John, who Jesus calls "the sons of thunder." Then we have, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, another James, Thaddeus, another Simon, and Judas Iscariot, who is said to have betrayed Jesus. There is a little foreshadowing there.

More to come.

Malachi, part 1

As I read through the first chapter of Malachi, I notice a literary pattern. First Yahweh makes a statement. Next, Israel or the priests ask a question based on the statement. Next, Yahweh elaborates. Then Israel asks another question based on what Yahweh just said, and so on.

The first statement Yahweh makes is "I have loved you." He is asked in return, "How have you loved us?" Then Yahweh talks of Jacob and Esau, when what he is actually referring to is the lands of Israel and Edom. Jacob and Esau were brothers, yet Yahweh favored Jacob. The statement "Jacob have I loved" is quite famous.  In Malachi, land of Edom is said to be a wasteland. Yahweh basically says it is cursed and under his wrath. The author of Malachi has associated Edom with Esau. Since we know Yahweh never actually spoke to anyone, the author clearly has some kind of prejudice against the land of Edom and its people that he wants to see maintained. If you read the Wikipedia article on Edom, you will see several possible reasons Israel may have had for its animosity. Plus, it is unclear if a kingdom of Edom even existed by the time of this writing. As is suspected of many prophetic writings, the prophet may have been writing about  Edom after it was already destroyed. This prophecy that is not actually prophecy is called postdiction.

Yahweh's second claim is to tell the priests that he gets no respect from them. They show contempt for his name. The priests ask, "how have we shown contempt for your name? Yahweh says, "You place defiled food on my altar." (This is his third claim) The priests ask, "How have we defiled you?" The answer to that question takes up the rest of chapters one and two.

These are the ways the priests defiled Yahweh: 1. They offered crippled and diseased animals as sacrifices. "Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal." If the priests do not listen to this admonition, they will also be cursed. Yahweh demands proper reverence, as in the old days when Levi was priest. 2. They married the daughters of foreign gods. This is akin to breaking faith with Yahweh. There is this weird kind of marriage analogy that represents Israel's relationship with Yahweh. In Malachi 2:14-16 it is not clear if god is talking about a man's actual relationship with his wife or his faith in god, or both. We are told Yahweh hates divorce. Yet Yahweh also hates the Jews' marriages to foreign women. He tells them not to break faith with the wife of their youth, but we saw in Nehemiah that the Jews were told to break up their marriages with the non-Jewish women. Confusing.

More to come.

Exodus chapter 6 part 3

*In the clan section we see that:

-Each of Moses's direct ancestors supposedly lived well past 100 years

-Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi. Their mother was their paternal grandfather's sister, therefore also from the tribe of Levi. Levi was the father of Kohath, Moses's grandfather, and Jochebed, Moses's mother. Kohath was the father of Amram, Moses's father. In other words, Moses's father married his own aunt.

-Aaron's wife Elisheba was the daughter of Aminidab and the sister of Nashon. This is very interesting because, if we look ahead to the book of Ruth 4:18-22, which supposedly would have been written hundreds of years later, we see that Aminidab was the great grandson of Perez, the son of Judah by Tamar back in Genesis chapter 38. Nashon was supposedly the great, great, great grandfather of David. The text is anticipating David, surely not a coincidence.

-In 400 years of captivity, there were only four or five generations born, from the children of Jacob to the children of Moses and Aaron.

-My study bible's footnotes say that the ages and generations don't quite work in real time, so there must be an explanation for the discrepancy. Maybe the text doesn't mean what it says and the word father needs to be interpreted loosely. Maybe it really means "ancestor." Except that doesn't quite work either.

Exodus chapter 2

After reading chapter 2:

*At this time, a Levite man married a woman, also from the tribe of Levi. This will be important later. My question is, how did a bunch of illiterate shepherds keep track of who belonged to which of the original 12 tribes, especially over a span of 400 years? Think of the difficulty we have today tracing our ancestors back even 200 years. That is with physical records and technology.

*The Levite woman had a baby boy and hid him for three months. Then she put him in a waterproofed basket and set him in the river among the reeds. His sister stayed nearby to watch what happened. The Pharoah's daughter came to the river to bathe, and saw the baby. She felt sorry for him. The baby's sister volunteered to go get someone to nurse him, then ran off and got her mother. Clever! So the baby's mother was paid to nurse her own child. When he grew old enough, he was taken to the Pharoah's daughter and became her adopted son. She named him Moses.

*When Moses was grown, he apparently knew he was an Israelite. When he saw one of his own people being beaten, he secretly killed the offender, or so he thought. Later, when he tried to break up a fight between two Israelites, they asked why they should listen to him, a murderer. Pharoah heard of it and tried to kill Moses, but he ran away to Midian. There he met seven shepherd girls at a well and defended them from some rude shepherd men. (Wells were obviously a great place to meet women in ancient times.) When the girls got home, they told their father Reu-el a Midianite priest, about Moses. He was invited to eat with the family and ended up staying and marrying Ruel's daughter  Zipporah. They had a son together.

*Meanwhile the Pharoah died and was replaced. The Israelites were still being oppressed and cried out to God, who remembered his promise to Abraham and became concerned. It was about time!

*The el at the end of Reuel's name tells which God he worshipped. Sticking the name of your God at the end of people and place names was common throughout that whole region. We see it in Egypt as well with names that end in ra, aten, and amun.

Genesis chapter 49

After reading chapter 49:

*Jacob gathers his sons around to predict their futures, and the futures of their descendants.  Reuben will not excel because he slept with his father's slave wife, Bilhah. Simeon and Levi, who killed all the men in Shechem, will be cursed and scattered in Israel. Judah will be a ruler, and is blessed. Zebulon will live by the sea. Issachar will be forced to labor. Dan will provide justice for the tribes of Israel. Gad will be attacked. Asher will be a gourmet. Naphtali will have beautiful offspring. Joseph is given many blessings and called the prince among his brothers. Benjamin is described as a ravenous wolf.

*Here is the first time we encounter symbolic references to the lion of Judah and God as a shepherd and a rock.

*For people, like me, who do not belive in being able to see the future, passages like this are assumed to have been written with hindsight, with knowledge of certain events having already happened. Therefore, it had to have been written some time after the first king of Israel in the lineage of Judah, David. That would be a good 700 years or so after these events.

*Jacob asks his sons to have him buried in the same place as Abrahaham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, and Leah, in the cave on land bought from the Hittites. Then he dies.

Brutality in the Bible

Now that we have read the story of Dinah, it would be a good time to talk about brutality in the Bible. There will be a lot more to come.

If we take this story as an isolated incident contained within the book if Genesis, what do we see? The first thing I notice is that,  so far, God has given no universal commands that apply to all humans, other than: 1. Be fruitful and multiply 2. Do not eat meat with blood in it. 3. Whoever sheds the blood of another man, by man shall his blood be shed.(Genesis 9:4-7) Levi and Simeon murdered all the men in the city of Shechem. They were never made to pay for their crime by Jacob or God.

By modern standards, this killing spree is disturbing to say the least. In first world countries today, the killers would be incarcerated, given psychiatric examinations, put on trial, and probably jailed for life or put in an institution for the criminally insane. I dare say that there has been no place in the world at any time where any group of people would choose to be slaughtered because one of their men assaulted a woman from another tribe.(If we read the story as factual, it is not even clear that Dinah was assaulted.)  At most, they would give up the man for punishment, pay her bride price, or give one of their own women as restitution.

The argument that this was a cultural thing has no precedent in Genesis. Obviously, the people of Shechem had no idea that they had done anything worthy of annihilation. There is no big picture here, just psychotic rage. The argument that this "just goes to show that they were human" is based on the assumption that all humans are essentially depraved. I reject that assumption.

I recommend The History Of Violence with Steven Pinker

Ganesis chapter 34

After reading chapter 34:

*Here we have the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. We are told that Dinah would go out and socialize with some local friends. Shechem, the son of the local bigwig, fell in love with her and sweet talked her. We are also told he "violated" her. It is unclear if this was an act of force or a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. It sounds more like the latter. However, we are never given Dinah's side of the story. This act would have reduced Dinah's value as a marriageable young woman in that society.

*Jacob doesn't seem that concerned. Dinah's brothers were furious when they found out. They could not bear the thought of an Israelite girl with a native of that land. It was disgraceful.

* Shechem wanted to marry Dinah and asked his father for permission. His father went to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son. He also was interested in mutual cooperation and inter-group marriage. Shechem himself offered whatever they wanted as a bride price for Dinah.

*Jacob's sons took advantage of Shechem's ardor to pretend to be willing to come to an arrangement, if all the men of that tribe would be circumcised. God forbid any of the Israelite women should marry a yucky uncircumcised man. Shechem did what they asked right away because he was so much in love. Shechem's father convinced the rest of his men that circumcision would also be to their advantage, so they went along with it.

*Three days later, when every one was still in pain, Simeon and Levi killed every male in the city and removed Dinah from Shechem's house where she had been staying. The rest of Jacob's sons looted the city, took the the livestock, and carried off the women and children. (Why do you suppose they wanted the women and children?) This is what you do when your sister runs off with a guy from the wrong family?

* What did Jacob do? He said,"Shame on you guys. Now the people around here won't like us. They might attack us, then we would be destroyed." The boys replied," But Dad, he treated Dinah like a prostitute." What was the difference between a non-prostitute and a prostitute at that time? As far as I can tell, it was whether  you paid her family before or after you took advantage of her.

Genesis chapter 29:

After reading chapter 29:

*Jacob continues on his journey to Haran, where Rebekah's brother Laban lives. He gets to a well and asks some shepherds if they know Laban. They do. As a matter of fact, here comes his daughter Rachel with Laban's sheep. Jacob helps her water the sheep, then he kisses her and begins to cry, after he tells her who he is. She runs home to tell her father. Laban welcomes him with open arms.

*After Jacob was there for a month, Laban offered to pay him for his work.  Jacob said he would work for Laban seven more years, if he would let him marry Rachel. Laban agreed. The seven years went by quickly because Jacob was so much in love with Rachel. I would have thought it would have seemed like seven years of torture, but I guess people back then had things to do to keep their minds off what they couldn't have.

*At the end of seven years Jacob was so ready to get married. By this time he would have been around 50 years old. So Laban gave a wedding feast. When evening came, Laban slipped Leah, his oldest daughter with weak eyes, into Rachel's place. The marriage was consummated and Jacob didn't figure out who he had slept with til the next morning! The deceiver had been deceived.

*One wonders how Leah and Rachel felt about this whole arrangement, but of course their opinions wouldn't have mattered. Laban tells Jacob that in that land the oldest girl marries first, but Jacob can still have Rachel if he agrees to work another seven years. Jacob agrees. He finishes the bridal week with Leah, then gets to have Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.

*The bible tells us Leah was not loved,  but she apparently got enough attention from Jacob to have four sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. God gets all the credit though, for "opening her womb." Whatever that means. Rachel, on the other hand was barren. The barrenness theme tells us to watch out. Any children Rachel manages to have will be special.