Peripatetic Jesus

Reading the Gospels in Greek is so freaky fun!

Jesus wasn’t just walking by the Sea of Galilee. He was “peripaton,” which is a word we know in English from the “peripatetic” philosophers!

It’s an interesting Greek word, because it literally means “walking around.” It doesn’t seem to be a vigorous walk; it’s more of a stroll. In fact, “taking a walk” is also covered by the verb “peripateo.” But it also has other connotations, like “walking on something, like a road,” “walking up and down [like in a hallway or on a stoa],” or “walking with someone and teaching them as you go,” or even “living life.”

This word gets used for “walk” in the Gospels, even in sayings like “Arise and walk.”

And yup, when Jesus went walking on the sea, it was also the verb “peripateo.”

This cracks me up. “Arise and stroll.”

Today I also learned the Gospel word for what Peter and Andrew are doing: they are “halieis,” which literally comes from the word “hals,” salt. They are old salts!

All “halios” things are “of the sea,” and therefore a sailor was a “halieus,” and fishermen were sailors. To fish was “halieuo.”

The thing that strikes me is that… well, all Christians are supposed to be salt for the world. So… yeah, this makes me think.

So Jesus said He would make them “halieis anthropon,” fishers of humans, or of men in the Old English sense.

There are two different words for nets in this reading. Simon and Andrew are throwing out an “amphiblestron”, which specifically means a net for throwing and wrapping around fish; and then they abandon their “diktua”, which is a word for any kind of nets. James and John are also busy mending their “diktua” nets.

(So I guess the internet is more of a diktyon net? And indeed, the modern Greek word is “diadiktyo.”)

The word for boat is “ploion,” which comes into the works of Peter J. Floriani!

And the word for “hired servant” is “misthotos,” which we only find elsewhere in the Gospels in the warning about the hireling abandoning the sheep.

But here’s another interesting thing. The word for “mending” is “katartidzo,” which means both to fix something, and to make it complete or fit for use. It can also mean to equip something with everything needed. And finally, it means “to perfect” or “to become perfect.” The idea is that you’re making something “artios,” whole and fit for use.

People don’t think of “be perfect” as meaning something like “be mended well, and thus ready for catching fish.” We’re not supposed to be perfect like a china cabinet full of knickknacks; we’re supposed to be perfect for activity and getting things done.

This is very scattered, I know. But it’s all so interesting!

The Ravages of Time: Chinese Comic and Anime

Even cruddy Chinese state media occasionally makes something worth watching. Today on Bilibili’s channel on YouTube, they’re streaming a CGI animated adaptation of a Three Kingdoms comic, The Ravages of Time.

The Ravages of TIme is a Hong Kong comic.

The main character is Liaoyuan Huo, a young warrior who is leader of the Crippled Warriors, a secret bodyguard of the Sima clan that uses a lot of assassin techniques. Huo and his flame Meng are trying to rescue Sima family hostages, and defeat Dong Zhuo and Lu Bei.

Other plot threads follow Zhongdu (Sima Yi), Yuan Fang (a genius young military adviser fighting for his clan), Sun Shu (a military woman from the South who is engaged to Fang for political reasons, but has a massive crush on him), Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu, and Yuan Shao, a general.

The problem is that there are five zillion factions and all sorts of plots and clever plans, so Huo has his work cut out for him. Everybody betrays everybody and rescues everybody.

The comic apparently had some very nice art, which seems to get used in the series as black ink drawings. But the CGI is pretty good too, with some scenes being exceptionally complex or pretty.

It’s a fairly long-running comic, which already had 40 volumes published back in 2011. So who knows how many there are now!

Right now, episode 10 just started, so check it out.

“What Are You Looking For?”

The feast of the Baptism of the Lord was last Monday, so this Sunday we skip right to John 1:35-42, which starts on the day after Christ’s Baptism.

(“Epaurion,” which literally means “on the morning (after), on the morrow” but includes the whole “tomorrow” or “the next day”, although aurion means morning. Pretty standard Indo-European thing with tomorrow words.) Later we hear that this happened at the tenth hour of the day, so it’s like 4 PM when John the Baptist makes his announcement.

Anyway, John commands his two disciples that are standing there with him, “Look! The lamb of God!” (‘Ide, ho amnos tou Theou!”) The verb for look is “eidou.”

So they do look, and they follow after Jesus, and Jesus turns around and gives them a look in return. But the word for what Jesus does is not “eidou,” but “theasamenos,” from the verb “theaomai.”

He was giving them a long considering look, or a very sharp look. It’s the kind of looking you do when you need to learn something by looking. He was observing them closely.

And then Jesus asked them a question: “Ti zeteite?”

“Zeteou” is another loaded word. It means “seek,” but it also means “ask, demand from a person, require” and “work for, strive for, aim at” and “think about, meditate on.”

So “What are you looking for?” is a fine translation, but it’s also “What are you asking of me?”

Andrew and the other disciple of John answer, “Pou meneis?” (Where are you staying?)

Usually the Gospels use the verb “menou” to mean staying at somebody’s house; but it also gets translated as “abide” in passages about God’s Word staying inside someone, God’s wrath staying on someone, “he will abide in Me and I in him,” and so on. It’s a word John likes, I guess.

So Jesus tells the two disciples to “Come and see.” (“Erchesthe kai opsesthe.”)

And that’s ANOTHER word for see, the verb “horao.” You can’t tell me that all this stuff doesn’t mean anything.

So the two stay with Jesus that day, and then we hear that Andrew “first” found (“euriskei”) his brother Simon, and then told Simon, “We have found the Messiah!” (“Eurekamen tou Messian!”)

Yup! Eureka!

So then Andrew brings Simon to Jesus, and Jesus looks at him — AND IT”S ANOTHER SYNONYM AGAIN!!!!!

“Emblepsas autou ho Iesous.” That’s the verb “emblepou.” It means, “to turn one’s eyes on, to observe, to consider.” It can even mean “to spectate.”

Anyway… we are told elsewhere that Simon Peter is “bar Jonah,” son of Jonah. But here, Jesus calls Simon “ho huios ‘Ioannou.” son of John. There are various thoughts about this, but the context seems to be that Peter was a disciple of John the Baptist first.

(The Evangelist doubles down on this nickname, and calls Simon “Simon ‘Ioannou” or “John’s Simon” at John 21:15 and after — the “Feed My sheep” passage — from when Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, the sons of Zebedee, and a couple of unnamed disciples all go fishing, and find that nothing is biting until Jesus starts kibitzing.)

(And then they all have a nice grilled fish brunch. Whoever the extra two disciples were, they were freaking lucky guys to eat Jesus’ cooking.)

(Btw, John 21:5 doesn’t say “fish.” It says “prosphagion,” a Greek dining term sometimes translated as “toppings”. The idea is that you primarily ate bread, and that fish or other goodies were the relish or toppings or condiment “with food”. I guess Jesus was hinting that He wanted to buy some fish for breakfast, on top of His bread that He already had? It seems like a customer sort of thing to say, which would go with His incognito appearance. Later, in John 21:9 and after, it calls the fish “opsarion,” which usually gets translated as “relish.” It implies a small fish getting cooked, though.)

(Anyway, I think the point is that Jesus is going right back to the beginning of Simon’s discipleship, when he had been John’s disciple. Or so the interpreters think.)

Anyway… back in today’s reading… Jesus formally tells Simon that he will be called Kephas, an Aramaic word for “rock,” which is then translated as “Petros” for the Greek-speaking reader.

So obviously the Petros/Petra thing is a load of crud, because here we have Petros only, as we do in most other Bible quotes about Peter. Duh.

It is freaky how much stuff in the Greek is not translated over into English. Freaky.

Handed Down: Baptism of the Lord

Some people really don’t like the concept of Apostolic Tradition, even though, in ancient times, every rabbi and every philosopher expected their students to memorize their habits and ways as well as their sayings.

St. John warns us in his Gospel, that, if he had written down everything that Jesus did, it could not be contained by all the books in the world. This explicitly says that John knows a whole bunch of things that we don’t know from the Gospel… but he undoubtedly passed those things along, as they had been passed on to him. And that means orally and experientially.

Again and again, we are told that use of the ancient Sign of the Cross was taught by the Apostles themselves, as was being buried toward the East, praying toward the East, and saying Mass toward the East, and as was singing the Psalms at certain times of day. Usages and forms change; but the traditions continue to be passed along.

We know a few non-Gospel sayings of Jesus that all the Fathers seem to have known, from Papias and from their own teachers. Acts 20:35 infallibly says that Jesus had said “It is better to give than to receive.” St. Clement of Alexandria and others say that Jesus told His disciples to “Be good moneychangers” (or bankers, if you want to translate it that way).

And then there are the things floating around, which seem to be hinted at and then written about later, which seem to be stuff the Church was almost afraid to talk about, or which was only found in lost books like Papias’. We only know about the general format of the earliest Masses because St. Justin Martyr spills the beans, in the full awareness that he will be criticized for talking about it to pagans and the uninitiated. He explains that he’s only reporting this to the world to reduce rumors and scandal. Centuries later, St. Cyril of Jerusalem still does not explain most of the Mass or the Sacraments until after the new catechumens are baptized. Things that are holy are to be left mostly unspoken, and this is called the “disciplina arcani.”

Mary’s ever-virgin status is another example, and the circumstances of her death. St. Epiphanius doesn’t seem to know hardly anything about it, at first, in the chronologically earlier chapters of the Panarion; and then in later chapters, he seems to know a great deal but is keeping his mouth shut, just drawing more and more analogies with big implications.

Another example is a tradition that made its way into some early, early variant editions of the Gospel of Matthew, in Chapter 3, inbetween verses 15-16 (or more likely, inside verse 16). It is quoted by the Fathers, including by St. Justin Martyr, who came from Palestine and Syria, and who would have known the earliest Hebrew and Aramaic versions of the Gospel of Matthew. This might have been a gloss added early to the text, because local eyewitnesses added it in, unless it was added by St. Matthew himself at their demand. Because it was an event that would have had a lot of local eyewitnesses.

Here’s one version of that additional line, from the Codex Vercellensis, an Old Latin translation:

“And when He was baptized, a gigantic light shone from the water all around, so that all who had come were full of fear.”

“Et cum baptizaretur, lumen ingens circumfulsit de aqua, ita ut timerent omnes qui advenerant.”

Well. Doesn’t that explain a great deal about the Easter Vigil? Doesn’t that explain a lot about Baptism, and the hallowing of the waters with a lit candle? Doesn’t that explain the insistence that Christ is our Light, and the Light of the World? Does that explain the paralleling of the Lord’s Baptism with His Transfiguration? And as Father Hunwicke pointed out, doesn’t this explain the insistence that the Three Kings’ star and the Baptism are somehow connected?

So it was something everyone knew. But given all the Gnostic junk, and the Adoptionism, and the Docetism, it might have been something that the Apostles were reluctant to talk about too much in public, while it would have been way too obvious to those who had been there and seen.

There is a lot of this stuff which goes unsaid, but it obviously underlies a lot of what we do and say, and how we think. Now that I know it, it seems to have been on the tip of the Church’s tongue all along, and as if I myself had known it but just had not been thinking about it. Very strange.

What Justin Martyr said to Trypho, in Chapter 88 of Dialogue with Trypho, was “When Jesus was gone down into the water, fire was kindled in the Jordan.” Tatian’s Diatessaron quotes Matthew’s Gospel as saying: “A light rose upon the waters.” Apparently there’s an “Ebionite Gospel” which adds a lot about John’s reaction to the light, and the Father responding to John. Epiphanius quotes it as saying, “Immediately a great light shone all around the place.” Ephrem talks about John seeing “an unwonted luster” upon Jesus’ body when being baptized.

So it really looks (to me) like everybody was adding explanatory detail that they knew to be true, and which possibly St. Matthew had preached orally. Or maybe it was in that lost Hebrew version of Matthew, which we know was still kicking around in St. Jerome’s time.

I find this info to be very helpful even if non-canonical; and I hope you do, too.

—-

St. Justin Martyr does a fun thing in Chapter 69 of Dialogue with Trypho – he connects the Septuagint version of Isaiah 35:1-2 (which specifically mentions the River Jordan) with the Lord’s Baptism and His forty day fast in the wilderness:

“Be glad, o thirsty wilderness, exult, o wilderness, and blossom like the lily. And the wildernesses of the Jordan shall bloom and exult… and my people shall see the glory of the Lord and the high exaltation of God.”

The Septuagint version continues in Isaiah 35:8-9 that “There shall be a pure Way (hodos katharos), and it shall be called a holy Way; and no impure person shall pass there, nor shall an impure way be there. But the scattered ones shall walk on it, and they shall not go astray… and the redeemed shall walk on it.”

Obviously Jesus is the Way, and that was the first name given to Christianity. So it’s pretty apposite.