In the scriptures, when the hosts of angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, virtues, principalities, powers, cherubim and seraphim are described, they are described using predominately one of two metaphors. The first of these has already been used here in the previous sentence, that of the ‘heavenly hosts’. This reference to the multitude of angelic beings forms one of the names given to the God of Israel in the Old Testament, Yahweh Sabaoth. Because of the similarity in English transliteration, this title is often confused with a reference to the Sabbath. It is not, however, the Hebrew words ‘shabat’. Rather, it is the plural substantive form of the verb ‘tsavah’. This is the verb that is used in Genesis 1, for example,…
The first question in this post’s title may seem an obvious area of discussion. There have been articles, books, and documentaries with the title ‘Who Wrote the Bible?’ In any modern commentary on a book of the Bible, a significant amount of space is devoted to discussing the authorship of that book. Introductions to the Old and New Testaments, the latter in particular, will devote a large portion of their text to various theories of authorship for different texts. Beyond just the identity of an author for the text, texts of the Old Testament are frequently split into various source documents with various authors then proposed for various portions or layers of the text. In the debates between liberal and…
To ask in the present day whether or not any book of the New Testament is truly canonical in the Orthodox Church may seem odd. While the history of the canonization process of the Old and New Testaments took place over several centuries and is neither neat nor tidy, it is an issue, particularly in the case of the New Testament, which has been settled for more than a millennium at this point. It is taken for granted that the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants all share the same list of 27 canonical New Testament books. Delving into the history of the book of Revelation in particular, however, and the arguments for and against its canonicity, reveals…
The book of Revelation takes its name from the first verse, identifying the text as ‘the Revelation (Apokalypsis) of Jesus Christ’. This is important to understanding the text. It is not the revelation of ‘end time’ events in the distant future. It is not the revelation of esoteric spiritual secrets about the cosmos. It is a revelation of who Jesus Christ truly is. The Revelation received by St. John is a communication from Christ to seven churches in Asia Minor, who are facing persecution, schism, compromise, and heresy. In answer to all of these difficulties faced by his people, Revelation proclaims the divine identity of Christ, who he is, what he has done, and what he shortly will do when…
The ‘general’ or ‘catholic’ epistles are a group of texts within the New Testament consisting of the epistles of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude. These are a group of texts which are too often neglected for several reasons. They are relatively short texts, which means though they are part of the Orthodox lectionary, they tend to be moved through very quickly, and mostly on weekdays in the regular lectionary cycle. While the Pauline epistles share a common background and theological purpose, the general epistles are extremely eclectic. James, for example, has little in common with the others. Based on biographical information in the Acts of the Apostles and his own biographical comments in…
