MATHETΩN

Alternatively, one can probe the Greek to perceive Paul Envoy’s mood of stern counsel yield to commiseration. I will translate the whole paragraph.

I would have, then, the men, with uplifted holy hands, to pray everyplace, without anger and arguing; and the women, with seemly carriage and cautious and collected minds, to deck themselves not with curls and gold or pearls or costly clothes but, as befits those who profess piety, with good works. Let a wife learn peaceably, in all submission: I do not allow a woman to teach nor to tyrannize a husband, but to be at peace. For Adám was created first, then Eúa; and so Adám was not deceived, yet the woman once wretchedly deceived has been marked the law-breaker— Yet she will come safely through childbirth, if only she remain trusting, loving, and modestly holy; believe me.

I want altogether to stop saying terms such as “biblical”. I do not believe in a Holy Bible. The book — or really the concept of the book — is for Christian hierarchs a cunningly-used talisman and tabu. It is not a true thing.

What I believe to be true is that there is a Word of God who is Jesus.

When Jesus was alive on earth, the words he said were words of God. Before, in heaven — and now from heaven — he by his Spirit said — and says — words of God.

These latter words of course are said in people’s spirits. But some of them are written down. The ones that are written down are true scriptures. Paul Envoy said: “Every writing that is divinely inspired is also useful for teaching, for argument, for correction, for education in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.” Himself in these ways used sayings of Jesus; and some passages of Hebrew scriptures, for which he always argued relevance and took care to say the Spirit was speaking the meaning he saw in them; and a few ancient poems of the Hellenes.

And now I will sum up my thinking:

“Biblical” is an Evangelicalist construction used as a weapon or tool; “scriptural” can refer to any writings a religion calls scriptures, but true scriptures are written words the Spirit of Jesus uses to tell me some true words of God.

And, of neccesity and as my own Teacher, oftener he tells me true words of God that are not written anywhere but my heart.

And, above all, Jesus personally is the Word, and the Truth.

I would like therefore to speak of an idea’s or word’s or action’s being of Jesus; or of his Holy Spirit, of his Kingdom; or of simply right and truth.

Paul certainly offered correctives to Hellenic culture. He reserved the thunder of the prophet for sins in men of every culture, but he offered some correctives such as this:

A Greek dramatist shows a beggar so poor he must hold his own begging-cup — “I must even dress myself,” he implores passersby, “so great is my misery that I have had to sell my slave.”

But Paul writes Followers in Thessaloniki: “Learn to work with your own hands.”

Paul was a middle-upper-class Hebrew — educated, of affluent and influential stock — writing to middle-upper-class Hellenes — educated and very affluent and influential. The Assemblings he fathered were in a few Hellenistic metropoles in Turkey and thereabout, of course, and were composed of statesmen, merchants, ex-clergy, and so on. He writes just as one would expect, then. He attempts to introduce Corinth to some of the better Hebrew mores, but with a liberal spirit. Indeed, he is always liberal toward the Hellenic culture — he writes as a sort of respectful, amiable diplomat.

I suppose what I want to say is that: Jesus contended with the powerful clergy, and so did Paul (per the Acts); but Jesus passed his time with the outcast, while we have no such record of Paul. (And Jesus eventually clashed with the civil powers — which we know Paul did as well, when he volunteered to enter the den of Caesar, but of his showdown we have no record.)

If instead of writing parentheticals to genteel houseslaves, Paul had written a whole epistle to the Empire’s slave-prostitutes, what would he have written?

“Copy me as I copy the Christ” seems the only answer we can read in him. “You have but one Teacher,” said Jesus.

Paul Envoy sometimes sows in his letters to the wealthy Greek Followers advice how they can thrive in life; this seems such a contrast to Jesus’s teaching to rejoice in suffering and seek dying; it is something that rankles the back of my mind these days. I know there is a synthesis; I can feel its becoming clear to me: yet I was glad to read a letter of Peter’s today, instead — and in it he says of Paul: “There are places he can be hard to understand, and then Christians wrench him out of shape because they are greedy.”

“We believe in beauty with economy.”

– Pericles

“The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope”

– a Hellenic definition of happiness

I must have a new motto. “Credo in veritatem, amorem, pulchritudinem …” — these are my sensibilities of five to ten years ago. Since then my mind and heart have undergone a sea-change.

The motto of the Mathetai I think shall be: “μιμηται μου γινεσθε καθως καγω χριστου.” But mine, while also, I hope, in Greek and also of similar sentiment, should be mine only.

What shall it be?