11/05//2025

During the last 3 centuries of the Old Testament some of the Jews, monotheists in a pagan world, had resisted the Hellenization of the Middle-East which had followed and sometimes preceded the conquests of Alexander. Even before the destruction of the Temple there were probably more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem.

Jesus and all the Apostles were born into beginnings of the Pax Romana which was forced onto the world by the military might of the Roman Legions. It is another historical fact that there many more Jews living outside of Palestine than within it and the  Roman roads which had followed the Roman Legions made it quite easy for Paul and his companions to spread the "Good News" throughout the world.

Paul must have known Hebrew but the texts with which Jesus, he and all the Apostles were familiar were taken from the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. The Liturgy of early church used Greek and Aramaic and the gospel was directed at all Jews in Palestine and of the Synagogues which existed all over the world where there were not only Jews but also Gentiles searching for the Truth.

The historically latest works of the Old Testament e.g. Wisdom/Maccabees display a non-Jewish bias i.e. towards events and behaviour and are thus rejected by the Rabbis who at that same time were also rejecting Jesus and his Church .

The last work of our New Testament is a defiance of what our Faith can be if it becomes more of a philosophy than the fire of our living God burning within us. 

There is nothing "speculative" about the Good Friday when Jesus, true God and true Man, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Begotten not made. of one being with the Father, through whom all things were made pressed the torn flesh of his back to the wood of the Cross and stretched out his arms for us to pierce his hands with our sins, the crudely made iron nails that would hold him up to be scorned by those for whom he had only love.

With Jesus there is always  "something greater here", St John's Apocalypse tries to capture and portray that Spiritual  "Greater" in words and images at which we can bow in wonder.