And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man,
the one who had had the legion, sitting there,
clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. - Mark 5:15
Rich Bledsoe’s old blog is a goldmine. Here’s an excerpt from The Dysfunctional Family of the Gadarene Madman.
“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free;
and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” 1 Cor. 12:13
On the BH forum, Michael Jones observed:
“If you look up the words for “drinking into” lexically (Strong’s), you come up with the idea of plants being irrigated and soaking up water through the roots. Is this somewhat valid? Are we like a bunch of trees around an oasis in the desert?” [1]
I believe that very often, the word choices of the biblical writers are hints to the literary structure — especially when their word choices are a little unexpected or ambiguous. This one isn’t unexpected, but perhaps that’s because we are so familiar with this passage. It really is an odd turn of phrase. Could the Bible Matrix shed any light on it?
The Lord’s name might not be mentioned explicitly in the book of Esther (though some scholars see it hidden in the text), but as literature it is riddled with riffs on the patterns found in the Law and the Prophets. We don’t see it because we don’t interpret “musically,” that is, looking for recurring themes. [1]
God loves architecture. He starts with a Garden, moves to stone, then to flesh. Should it surprise us that the Nativity and the events surrounding it follow the same patterns as the Tabernacle and the Creation week?
Creation: In part 1 we saw that the theme of the first stanza of 2 Thessalonians 2 was the “Sabbath” rest of the church. Paul writes to remove the alarm caused by the “conspiracy theorists” who attempted to disturb it.
Division: The second stanza concerned the splitting of the church into two — those who would persevere despite the growing threat of tribulation throughout the empire [1], and those who would succumb to their fears. The attacks would culminate in the completion of Herod’s Temple and the Nero’s burning of Rome in AD64. The first threw doubt upon the words of Christ concerning the Temple, and the second, though hardly believed, was an excuse to scapegoat this new Jew-Gentile sect, now legally separated from the protection afforded to Jews by Rome. The gospel tore Judaism in two. Then it united those believing Jews with Gentiles. But as in the wilderness, new Israel would be threshed and purified.
One of the hyperpreterist/full preterist [1] gents made a keen observation after reading my article Covenant is the Key: Moses vs. Hyperpreterism. My argument was that since the Revelation follows the Covenant structure laid down in the Torah (and echoed throughout the Bible), we should expect the final section of the book to concern the future, otherwise known as Continuity or Succession.
The counterargument was that this section did concern the future when John wrote the book, but that we are living beyond that future now, and there is no final event or consummation. The only consummation was AD70.
This is a really good argument, but it does two things. Firstly, it makes nonsense of their own argument that Revelation 20 is another viewpoint of the events surrounding the end of Judaism in AD70. Also, it fails to take into account the structure and contents of Revelation 20 itself.
or Mike follows the tracks of the Apostle Peter’s stanza panzerFew passages have caused as much discussion as the one concerning “the spirits in prison” in 1 Peter 3. It’s also one of the few texts where I found that not a single one of the explanations offered was satisfactory. Well, I’ve run the matrix over it, and I reckon I’ve solved it.
Joel 2: 1-11
Into Joel again, and he knows nothing of our chapter divisions. At least the chapter break occurs at the end of an obvious stanza. We are still within Ethics 3, so this is the Trumpets stanza of a Trumpets cycle (aren’t fractals fantastic?) It’s a bit like that movie Inception — as the prophecy moves forward, each step is expanded to further level of structure, a dream within a dream. In this case, it is a multi-level nightmare, a brewing, billowing thundercloud. [1]
Jerusalem had become a new Babel, so God raised up a real Babel in order to overrun the Land and swallow her up. Joel uses the Creation, Dominion and Feasts structures but applies them to the invading Babylonians in ironies that would go over our head — if we weren’t familiar with these literary devices!
Here’s the feast/Covenant structure in the doxology that appears near the end of the book of Hebrews:
