metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
I finished our analysis of chapter 1 in Matthew yesterday, and I'm now going to write two posts, with the first just being an overview of things I felt were important and/or interesting, and then in my second post I'll give my opinions on some items that I know you're all waiting with baited breath for, which does bring up the question as to why eat bait? Well, maybe it's because you're a lousy fisherman/women/transgender?
Matthew starts out with a genealogy of Jesus that goes all the way back to Abraham. The feeling is that this was done as Matthew was oriented to the Jewish people, thus there would be the necessity to connect Jesus to David's lineage to show that it was at least possible that he could be the long awaited Messiah.
Also connected with that narrative we also went back into a look at some very strong but controversial women, such as Tamar, Rehab, and Ruth.
We then looked at a diagnosis of Jesus' name "Yashua", which is a slang form of Joshua and means "God saves". Also there is "Christos", which is Greek for the Hebrew title of "mosiach" ("messiah"-- an anointed one). "Yashua" was a fairly common name back then and there were numerous messiahs. Also he gets labeled "Emmanuel", which means "God is with us", which does become a source for the Trinitarian concept. .
Parallels were then drawn between Jesus and Joshua, especially dealing with the concept of saving their people, albeit from different perspectives.
And finally there's the teaching that Jesus was born of a virgin and remained a virgin for the rest of her life, and that the labels for "sons" and "daughters" was also the same labels for cousins. Protestants tend to differ with Catholics as to whether Mary had sexual relations with Joseph and had other children.
So, the above is the general approach taken, but since this meeting was over two hours, some of these were discussed in more detail plus some other tangents were covered.
The next post is my take, so hopefully you got rid of the taste of bait my now.
Matthew starts out with a genealogy of Jesus that goes all the way back to Abraham. The feeling is that this was done as Matthew was oriented to the Jewish people, thus there would be the necessity to connect Jesus to David's lineage to show that it was at least possible that he could be the long awaited Messiah.
Also connected with that narrative we also went back into a look at some very strong but controversial women, such as Tamar, Rehab, and Ruth.
We then looked at a diagnosis of Jesus' name "Yashua", which is a slang form of Joshua and means "God saves". Also there is "Christos", which is Greek for the Hebrew title of "mosiach" ("messiah"-- an anointed one). "Yashua" was a fairly common name back then and there were numerous messiahs. Also he gets labeled "Emmanuel", which means "God is with us", which does become a source for the Trinitarian concept. .
Parallels were then drawn between Jesus and Joshua, especially dealing with the concept of saving their people, albeit from different perspectives.
And finally there's the teaching that Jesus was born of a virgin and remained a virgin for the rest of her life, and that the labels for "sons" and "daughters" was also the same labels for cousins. Protestants tend to differ with Catholics as to whether Mary had sexual relations with Joseph and had other children.
So, the above is the general approach taken, but since this meeting was over two hours, some of these were discussed in more detail plus some other tangents were covered.
The next post is my take, so hopefully you got rid of the taste of bait my now.