Mariologic Bible study

1) deretour : Mariologic Bible study, 2) New blog on the kid : Ipsa conteret, by Heinz Lothar Barth, German Book Tip, 3) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Patrick Madrid is right about kecharitomene and blessed among women

There are about three "magnificats" in the Bible that refer in some way to a woman called blessed or blessed among women. The chief one is of course in St Luke's Gospel ch. 1.

First there is Judges, ch. 5, the Canticle of Debbora and Barac, in which Iahel is praised:

24 Blessed among women be Jahel the wife of Haber the Cinite, and blessed be she in her tent.

The reason given is that she was the downfall, indeed killer of Israel's enemy Sisera:

26 She put her left hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer, and she struck Sisara, seeking in his head a place for the wound, and strongly piercing through his temples.

Then there is the Canticle of Judith, but first - ch. 15 of her book - the greeting that provokes it:

9 And Joachim the high priest came from Jerusalem to Bethulia with all his ancients to see Judith. 10 And when she was come out to him, they all blessed her with one voice, saying: Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honour of our people:

11 For thou hast done manfully, and thy heart has been strengthened, because thou hast loved chastity, and after thy husband hast not known any other: therefore also the hand of the Lord hath strengthened thee, and therefore thou shalt be blessed for ever. 12 And all the people said: So be it, so be it.

Then she sings (ch. 16):

7 But the almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman, and hath slain him. 8 For their mighty one did not fall by young men, neither did the sons of Titan strike him, nor tall giants oppose themselves to him, but Judith the daughter of Merari weakened him with the beauty of her face.

And there is the Magnificat itself, after the second time the Blessed Virgin Mary was called "blessed art thou among women". Luke ch. 1:

28 And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

...

41 And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: 42 And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

And (a few verses later) thereon the Magnificat.

Now, Jahel and Judith had each killed an enemy of Israel. Sisera and Holophernes. But why the Blessed Virgin Mary? Was she the downfall of anyone? She was too late to get down Sisera and Holophernes, she was even a bit late to get down Antiochus Epiphanes or Gorgias (whose armies were defeated and after the Temple was purified, and that was Chanukkah) - was she downfall of anyone then? Yes, of an even greater enemy, "the old worm". As was prophecied in Genesis:

14 And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. 15 I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

Here a Protestant may ask what this is. Commentator answers:

15 "She shall crush"... Ipsa, the woman; so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, viz., the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent's head.

Funny thing is, Hebrew would use same form, since seed also is feminine in Hebrew. Thank you, Dr. Heinz-Lothar Barth!

How? When? By believing, but also by complying obediently with what God required. By standing at the side of the Son who defeated him then later under the Cross. That is her victory over Satan. That is her victory over sin. That is what the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox say in unison. Is there anything to bear out that they are right and Protestants wrong? Indeed, the words of the Magnificat:

48 Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

All generations of what?

Normally, after what came before, all generations of Israel.

But it is not the ones normally referred to as Jews who thus honour her generation after generation.

Nor of Pagans, since they who honour Apollyon (the destroyer) as "Apollo" or "Shiva" are not the best judges of who is blessed and who is cursed.

Is there then another Israel, another people of God? We believe there is the Church. Both Catholics and Orthodox believe the Church is Israel, and both honour her, generation after generation:

Hail thee Mary, full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

Godbearing Virgin, hail thee Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women For thou hast brought forth the Saviour of our souls.

Both Catholics and Orthodox know the prayer: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Amen. Among Roman Catholics it was attached to the Hail Mary by Savonarola, and later it has been used that way, among Greek Orthodox it remains a separate prayer. Even in RC Church, the original separation of the two prayers shows when praying the Rosary according to "second method" of St Grignon de Montfort, inserting a relative clause after the name Jesus before this concluding prayer.

Before those prayers were usual, there were other ones. Also Marian.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Melville, Paris
16/IV/2010

Brother Dimond refutes claim that Shroud of Turin has been duplicated (link, youtube)

Il était une fois un peuple qui ne servait pas les idoles ...

... oui, à l'époque de Pharaon, ce peuple là était l'honneur du vrai Dieu. Et encore à l'époque de Pompée.

Depuis, les descendants du Pharaon, les descendants de Nabucondonosor, les descendants d'Alexandre de Macédoine, les descendants notemment de Pompée et de Jules César ont cessé de servir les démons. Il y en a qui servent Osiris et Isis, mais en sécret. Il y en a qui servent Vénus et Bacchus, mais en blague. Il y en a qui servent, mais il y en a peu qui osent admettre ouvertement de la faire en sérieux. Le peuple, jusqu'à récemment même les états, servent un Dieu unique, un Dieu jaloux, qui s'est révélé dans la Torah.

Sont-ce les juifs qui ont converti ces peuples là? Ce sont les chrétiens. Les chrétiens, nous qui disons que ce Dieu est Un Dieu en Trois Personnes, le Père et le Fils et le Saint-Esprit, et que le Fils est incarné par la Vierge Marie et mort sur la Croix pour notre salut.

Entre-temps il y en a encore des Juifs qui se croient encore l'honneur du vrai Dieu. L'honneur? Je ne crois pas. Blasphèmes envers la Vierge¹, blasphèmes envers la Croix, démarches médiatiques comme pour se faire haïr par des peuples chrétiens et pauvres, comme dans l'affaire Glemp. En plus, parfois des parents tyranniques, comme Shylock. Ou les parents de "la petite juive", un compte conte assez réaliste de H. C. Andersen. Par bonheur pas tous.

Pour se consoler leur image d'identité collective, il y en a qui citent - hier j'ai lu en Tribune Juive, ouverte sur un table en G. Pompidou, l'article où ils citent Bossuet, son éloge des hébreux parmi les idolâtres. Aujourd'hui je ne trouve pas la citation de Bossuet en web. Mais Bonald et de Maistre parlaient aussi des époques avant le christianisme.

Mais de côté chrétienne on est très bien d'accord, qu'il était un fois un peuple qui ne servaient pas les idoles, il y avait une époque on les appelait Juifs. Seulement, depuis d'autres ont pris la relève, comme les chrétiens de la légion thébaine ou comme les martyrs de Russie et d'Ukraine sous le Communisme. Ou ceux qui refusent aujourd'hui de faire un idole des Juifs morts en Birkenau, ou de Anne Frank. Ou ceux qui risquent aujourd'hui leur pourvivre en obéissance aux préceptes du christianisme. Ou l'activiste pro-life récepmment tué aux états-unis (il semble y avoir eu dans les rapports policiers des doubtes peux sérieux, contraires aux aveu du meurtrier, sur le motif).

Hans-Georg Lundahl
13/26 sept (selon les calendriers)
l'année du Seigneur MMIX
Paris V, Buffon

¹Voir ce que des soi-disants chrétiens acceptent comme nouvelle traduction sur l'instigation de juifs ou de judéophiles qui réinterprètent le mot parthenos. Parfois, peu-être, les judéophiles font des juifs qqc de pire qu'ils ne soient toujours par eux-mêmes.

Links for Exaltation of the Cross

Dream of the Rood - on a blog, versified version of Modern english Translation

http://o-x.fr/md5

Vexilla Regis - youtube

http://urlb.at/a24h



Historic page about Persian invasion of Palestine, with aftermath, retaking of Holy Cross

http://urlb.at/a24l

Orthodox description of the Feast Day

http://urlb.at/a24m

And, an online book about Padre Pio:

http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/PadrePio.pdf by Bro. Michael Dimond, Most Holy Family Monastery, a sedisvacantist.

Blessed feast of the Dormition!

Blessed feast to all the ladies who read this blog, to my mother if she reads it, to ... if she reads it and to all Christians. Our Lady has passed from life - to life.

Today's celebrations:

• Afterfeast of Transfiguration, happy Transfiguration belatedly New Calendarists and Uniates!


• St Anne, the Granny of God, 25 July in Eastern Calendar, which is today according to Old Calendar. Happy name's day all Annes!


• Had the pleasure of attending the marriage of Rafaël and Stéphanie in St Sévérin parish this evening, MEILLEURS VŒUX!


• Before which I had heard, in the Abbey Bookshop, the song:
  
  

  "Dance, dance, wherever you may be,
  For I am the Lord of the dance" said He:
  "And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
  And I'll lead you all in the dance" said He.

  
  
  And that is true, for He danced on the gates of Hell, when he came down there.

Why then is there a canon forbidding priests to dance in public? Because the liturgy participates in the highest dance, that of the angels who fall down before God singing the Trisagion. What you normally call dances, like Squaredance or Waltz, takes it model in somewhat lower angelic spirits, though still great, who lead the stars in the dance that is visible for human eyes. Or maybe they too get up to the throne of God once in a while --- I have not yet read Dionysios Areopagita.

This message on guardian angels by Plinio Correa de Oliveira says:

"There are angels to watch over groups, families of souls, societies and other institutions, so that everything that exists is guarded by angels. This, incidentally, is part of the role of the angels, for they maintain the whole material universe executing all of the decrees of God."

UPDATE:

There is a darker side to the ban on dances in public for priests. In pagan religions like the Greek or the Hindoo, false divinities were regarded as inventors or protectors of dance. When I was young I told nuns who had been treating Elvis "he is the King of music" - no, Jesus is the King of Music, they said. As there was Elvis so there were Apollon, Dionysos and Shiva (to name some) to pose as "King of dance" (Natârâja). And in both Greek and Indian sources we have stories that make these divinities look like masks of the devil: death, intoxication, false but selffulfilling prophecy. That is not "somewhat lower but still high", that is real low. Even if their title is false, the association may make it unfitting for priests - or else the Roman adage "nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit".

I am not that papist...

Quote:

I believe totally in the teachings of the Catholic Church as proclamed by the Pope, His Holiness Benedict, through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

End of quote.

What is wrong? Pope proclaims teaching, Scripture and Tradition are the means to that. Normally, Scripture and Tradition are what proclaims to us, what Christ proclaimed from the Father - and the Pope or any other bishop is only the means for that.

Joyeux Noël, lecteurs

Glad Jul, läsare
Fröhliche Weihnachten, meine Leser
Merry Christmas, readers!

Between Sunday of Genealogy and Christmas Day

I am referring to Fr Huneycutt that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the end of this genealogy, since He is also indeed the Christ.


Part 1 , Part 2 , Addendum., Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6, Long But Final

This on - and against - Dan Brown's bestseller and blasphemy "da Vinci Code"

PS:

Why did Sophie finally believe Teabing? Was she too polite to disagree with the host? Was she under a spell? Was she so tired of being persecuted she felt totally dependent on Teabing? Was she already a half apostate ready to take any excuse for quitting Christian dogma?

Only one character is less credible than Sophie, and that is Silas. He is so out of the way as an ascetic, as an Opus Dei, as a bum.

Discovering relevant questions or - forgetting relevant answers?

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis starts off criticising two (unnamed) English text-books that subrepticiously argue that value is subjective, and that appeal to emotions is both wrong and un-informative.

This trend of challenging received wisdom, seems to have gone on, in the teaching of English in England and US, et c, as well as in the teaching of other first languages. Witness this title, but which is not a textbook:

The Rhetoric of Fiction
Wayne C. Booth (2d edition)

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award 1962 and the David H. Russell Award of the Nat. Counc. of Teachers of English 1966 (?)

Obviously this book is on the influential side in these professions. And it does challenge given wisdoms, let's have a closer look: this time it is, among other things, the knowability of someone else's emotions, that is under crossfire. As this is not a text-book for pupils, the attack is pretty direct. Before quoting, let it be noted that this approach completely ruins any argument in favour of the position of "Orbilius" and "The Green Book", that value is a matter of emotion: if one cannot know the emotions of one another, how can one know that someone else, when evaluating something, is really speaking about his (presumably unknown) emotions for it?

Here we go, quoting a footnote that ends on page 18:

"[...ac]counts, like the Bible, packed with such illicit entries into private minds, with no distress whatever. For us it may seem strange that the writers of the Gospels should claim so much knowledge of what Christ is feeling and thinking. "Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him" (Mark 1:14). "And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him ..." (5:30). Who reported to the authors these internal events? Who told them what occurs in the Garden, when everyone but Jesus is asleep? Who reported to them that Christ prays to God to "let this cup pass"? Such questions, like the question of how Moses could have given an account of his own death and burial, may be indispensable to historical criticism, but they can easily b overdone in literary criticism."

This is the passage indeed, for which I named this article. And I am not concerned with literary criticism as such, any more than C. S. Lewis*, but with answering something given when purporting to speak on literary criticism, in this case historic criticism. The question before us is, whether Christian readers of the Gospels, as well as Christian and Jewish readers of Pentateuch and Job (we'll get to that book later, touching Homer too) of long ago where blind to very simple questions - or whether unchristian readers of these books, like Mr. Booth (not easily confounded with William B.!) are ignorant of and blind to very simple possible and even (once you come to think of them) compelling answers.

If you have 2000 years accepting a text as true information honestly given and say 50 years saying it pretends to know the unknowable, since knowability is no new discovery, the spontaneous hunch would be to agree with the 2000 years, even before coming to solution of problems. Let us now approach solutions.

On the Gethsemane Question, I am actually forced to repeat what C. S. Lewis had said already, either in Miracles or possibly in Fern Seeds and Elephants. I'll try to vary the wording at least. Nowadays, music on radios, cassette recorders, CDs, LPs, singles, MTV, mp3 is ubiquitous. So was, during Antiquity, the spoken word without any amplification or preservation, spoken on occasions when we would have been silent - or out of reach from hearing it. Sometimes it provoked sleep. In BoNe you will find that reading aloud from Moby Dick sends people (and monsters) to sleep. Actually, so does monotonous speaking anyway. You won't know what I mean, if you have not been to some nowadays very unusual sermons. Catholic and Orthodox priest are not encouraged to exceed a quarter of an hour, but ... Now, unlike the instantaneous sleep magic in BoNe, when you fall asleep in real life, there is a moment when you are still listening, there is a moment when you catch isolated words and forget them immediately because you are to tired to care and only then comes the time when you hear nothing, because you are fast asleep. The New Testament gives us three examples:

1 St Paul preaches (not as in a sermon in Mass or homily halfway through Divine Liturgy, so as to let people sit, but really trying to say all essentials to newbies on one occasion, no doubt), a boy sits on the windowsill (no doubt to catch fresh air so as not to fall asleep, probably his ma or pa was more interested than he was), and falls asleep. He loses balance, falls, breaks the neck. A physician present there (enter St Luke, author of the Acts of the Apostles where you find this) makes a death warrant. St Paul raises the boy to life.

2 St Paul is on trial, he has a lawyer to speak on his behalf. As Lewis noted, the reported words are way too short for a Roman rhetor to get away with, even if he was badly paid. Probably St Paul either fell asleep and remembered only first phrases or so or gave a few sentences in exact quote before going on to a very abridged version.

and, most important:

3 Before this happened, Christ had prayed. His disciples probably slept a few hours. Which means He prayed a few hours. The words reported are too short to have been all the prayer of those hours, it is simply a few phrases that woke the disciples up because He cried them aloud. That He prayed the rest of the time is reasonably assumed without risk of mistake, because they knew His habits (I mean after three years together on practically every piece of road and field in Palestine ...)

and, not as important, but still:

4 It happens, even when priests limit sermon time, if I am to trust this:

___ Where no one can see/hear me talking during services

___ Where no one will notice me sleeping during services

___ Where no one can see/hear me talking or me sleeping during the sermon
(note: additional charge) (from Orthodixie)

Next question: how does St Mark know that Jesus felt a virtue go forth from Him, when the woman touched his garment?

Acts 19: 11 And God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles. 12 So that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.

St Paul and - more important for St Mark, perhaps - St Peter made miracles too. They knew what it felt like. I do not, but I trust the word of St Peter in the writing of St Mark. Unless, of course, St Mark had performed healings himself before writing this. Or Jesus had told St Peter and other Apostles, when speaking after the healing of that woman. A question which Wayne C. Booth does not ask, but which these texts answer is: God does work wonders by the touch of the relics (even just garments, clothes) of Christ and His Saints. Which is one reason why Protestantism is dead wrong (at least as preached at Reformation, there are Anglo-Catholics and such who are not really as Protestant as all that in this respect).

Third question: how does anyone but Jesus Himself know when He is "moved by pity"?

Indeed, how does anyone know the emotions of anyone else? Nevertheless, we pronounce ourselves on each others' emotions pretty often. Gestures, ensuing deeds, facial expression, and so on, and so forth do help us to guess pretty accurately. Sure, the pretense to empathy can be sham, as is probably the case when not just momentary emotion, but exact motive for it or subconscious motive for something else is guessed along with it (a hobby that psychiatrists and Freudians indulge in and sometimes get paid for), but I think anyone can pretty easily use signs like these, particularly with people they know, to ensure an immediate guess of someone else's emotion.

Mark 1: 40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down said to him: If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41 And Jesus having compassion on him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: I will. Be thou made clean. 42 And when he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was made clean.

Pretty straight guess that Our Lord felt sorry for the man, isn't it? Or that he simply decided to act so. Because "having compassion" is not primarily in Biblical language a strong emotion, but a decision to act compassionately, or so I have heard people tell. Even so, anyone might feel sorry for a leper. Why not Our Lord?

Not so for Mr. Booth. If Federigo is really in love with Monna Giovanna is something that no-one can know. Especially not Boccaccio, who is a total stranger (hullo, how does Mr. Booth know that?) and not even Fiametta. He makes a long discussion of the questions involved with "omniscient author's viewpoint" in that story the pages that precede. And apparently, if someone is really in love with someone is an unknowable question. Like the State of Grace in Roman Catholic Theology. Only that emotions are so much more superficial as a question, so much closer to flesh and therefore surfaces of it, than a purely spiritual fact. But some, having decided that morality and values be based on emotion rather than spirit, apparently go along to where they treat emotions as spiritual, that is unknowable.

Fourth set of questions: who wrote Job, how does he know what God and Devil say outside human observations, how did Moses write what happened after his death?

God talked to Moses on more than one occasion. And proved He was God to Moses and the audience** by miracles. The book of Job is something God told Moses. So were the six days of creation. So might the end of the Pentateuch be, except the other explanation is that Deuteronomy has Moses for author because he is author of nearly all the text. The last chapter is only 1/34 of the whole text. Douay-Rheims Bible Online comments in red italics in this chapter. See comment on verse five.

Hans Lundahl
Avignon
5/18 Juin 2008

*was in that place, that is: otherwise he was a Literary Historian by profession.
**scroll down to section marked in yellow

Was Jesus, the Christ, Essenian?

If Essenians were anything like what I've read, they are in fact mentioned in the Canonic Gospels. Simon, before becoming a disciple of Our Lord, was a zealot. And crowds more than once tried to make Him King. When at last they did, they abandoned Him within a week. Possibly because he did not answer up to the Essenian expectations of a military and political Messiah, chasing the Romans and establishing peace.

Did God give any peoples of the time such "Messiahs"? Two barbarian Kings died on the Parascheve, they died and the Sun went black for three hours.* So they died when our Lord was crucified, as long before His death as the robbers crucified alongside Him died after it. "Confregit in die irae suae reges" One was Conor Mac Nessa, whose grandson Cuchulainn delivered Ulster from the Leinster invaders. The other was Froda of Denmark, in whose reign a little girl could walk from one end of the land (which land? Jutland? Scania? one of the islands?) to the other loaded with golden rings and yet go unmolested. That is what God gave idolaters, but He gave His own nation something infinitely higher: and they rejected Him. On my nation's day, I must confess that military deliverers are not always a boon to a nation. Gustavus Wasa became a Church plunderer, paroding the cleansing of the temple blasphemously. And yet Our Lord too was a fighter. Ascension Day - celebrated yesterday - was the public triumph, before the eleven and before all angels.

Hans Lundahl
Avignon
May 24th/6 June
St Symeon Stylite
and St Vincent of Lerins
Y o Gr 2008

*the wikipedia articles to which I link from their names suggest I misremembered here: Froda seems to have died before Good Friday and Conor Mac Nessa afterwards, when hearing about it: unless I remember correctly this time, i e he asked his druid why the sun went black, and Cathbad answered that the Jews were killing their King, which upset Conor, who was as royalist as he was royal, and too old not to die from the shock.