Mar 12
20
Listening to Voices 17
(What If This Is True?)
Is there really any question about mistranslation?
Chapter Seventeen
Continuing on from chapter 16 …
“THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID!”
I’ve spent the past twenty-five years railing about a system that has been totally corrupted by mistranslation, misinterpretation and the religious traditions which the system has fostered …what if some of these things about which I’ve been ranting are true?
Who I was referencing with the above, underlined and in upper case letters quote, was Jesus. Here’s the challenge with even using the name of Jesus. Some people don’t believe that we can really know whether he actually said the things the four writers of what we’ve been told are the “Gospels,” that is the varied and in some aspects very different accounts given of what Jesus said and did – over the span of several years during which these four were written.
Different scholars claim different things …and I would claim that apparently, at least some of these scholars claim these widely different views in order to bolster their own attempts to prove to themselves what they already believe.
What did you mean to say Jesus?
Let’s get it straight …more or less – I am not about to lay claim to any particular bent of any particular scholar, but we should make note of the fact, depending upon which scholar is making the claim, that the first of the Gospels was written, it is generally agreed, beginning around 20 years after the death of Jesus and the last one between 60 and eighty years after his death.
The foregoing paragraph, if true, should be enough to give anyone pause about consistency and veracity. Anyone objectively reading John and Matthew has to ask if these were these written about the same man? There has been much written about the “harmony of the Gospels” …in an attempt to make all four of them seem like a cohesive whole; I cannot help myself with a little explosion here …GIVE ME A BREAK!
I’ve said it before …and here we go again, if you are willing to allow it, the Bible can be tremendously inspirational. It also has been the object behind an untold amount of argument …even violent argument!
Why, then, bother to bring it up? What’s the point? Is it even relevant to what is going on today? The answer to those latter two questions can be an emphatic “yes” …depending upon the perspective with which it is approached.
Let’s lay out something that might make a difference to some. I have admitted something that I believe is vital to understanding LIFE itself. A study of the purported words of Jesus in English and in red letter editions, as if they were true …until I started reading them in the original manuscript language used by all four referenced writers, that is Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and discovered in so many instances, again, “THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID!”
Let’s take a quick for instance from a “modern translation” and compare it with the KJV and have a little fun.
“Don’t worry about what goes on tomorrow because every day presents plenty of opportunities to worry,” …that’s one of the many variations of “modern” English.
Here goes with the 1600s version from the KJV: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Sometimes distractions are in red.
The best bet for an accurate translation into today’s English of what the original language actually said – “Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted by anything new.”
Holy mackerel, if this is true and if it is new for some of you, don’t let it be a distraction!
A distraction from what!!! …well, dear friends, in context and, yet again, in the original has to do with keeping our focus on the purposes of our SPIRIT-PARENT. In another place, again, in the original language, another writer quoted Jesus as saying that if we do maintain our focus on getting our directives from our SPIRIT-PARENT – everything we need/want comes to us automatically and without effort.
If this is true then the “just do it” axiom so prevalent in today’s mad rush for success and prosperity might be best directed at asking our SPIRIT-PARENT what we should be doing right this moment for our better good – on account of HE/IT/SHE knows what we need far better than you or I.
Back to the purported words of Jesus even in the original language …it wasn’t the study of Jesus’ words, even in the original language, which changed my life from one of powerlessness, to a realization of the presence and power of our SPIRIT-PARENT – it was the application of them.
Before Brad writes, he tunes in.
They worked …but not without a lot of discipline of putting them into practice; which also brought about an understanding of the obstacles which were in my way to realization.
This discipline, of which I just now felt nudged (which was also confirmed) to mention, is not and was not some onerous, boring task, but rather the door that opens to an entirely new and exciting way of looking at everything.
Careful, now, don’t let it be a distraction, ask Daddy!
I’ll share the one, two, three steps with every individual freely and for FREE …but I am not supposed to share it unless you personally want it and are willing to e-mail me so we can get into a dialogue for the specifics that best fit you.
brad@spiritualhealingsource.com
p.s. watch out for #18 …it’s a “doozy”