The Divine
Council Sequence

Read as one Christian canon, the texts can be read as one story, and its end is stated. Arranged by the events they describe: the nations are paired with lesser heavenly powers while Israel stays the LORD’s portion; those powers lose their rule; and the nations are given to the Son. Every step rests on passages quoted word for word. The end needs no inferred link, once the canon names the Son of Psalm 2 as Jesus (Acts 13:33): the nations are promised and given to the Son, who is set above all rule and authority and at the end abolishes it. The beginning is inferred, and each link is graded: that the nations were paired with heavenly powers is strong; that those powers ruled them, moderate; that the pairing comes after Babel in the story’s order, moderate (step 7). A conclusion that needs several such links is weaker than each, so the beginning taken whole, paired, ruled and set after Babel, is a reading. The proof, its cases and its machine check are in The sequence as a conditional proof.

Of the three gaps, the first (no New Testament book quotes Deuteronomy 32:8) is a permanent absence, and the chain does not depend on it. The third (who the Most High is) 32:8–9 alone does not settle, but the canon does: it names him, “You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth” (Psalm 83:18), and sets the LORD over the heavenly beings who surround him (Psalm 89:6–7), so that he is not one of the sons of God is strong; and the New Testament calls Jesus “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32) and, in the critical Greek text of Jude 5, the one who “delivered His people out of the land of Egypt”, which makes him, on a reading, the LORD whose portion Israel is (Gap 3). The second (a link to Ugarit’s seventy sons of Athirat) stays open and touches no step.

Scope. This is a reading of the books the BSB prints, in their final form and as one book. That premise, the canon read as one (R1), is assumed and not proved: the study asks whether the account it gives holds together, and how its claims stand against history and the sciences. A later book may name a figure in an earlier one, as Acts 13:33 names the Son of Psalm 2 as Jesus, and within this scope such a naming counts as stated. It is not a claim about what each author, writing across a thousand years, meant alone; where historians read a text otherwise, the study says so. Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, 2 Maccabees, Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Qumran scrolls, Philo, Josephus, the Targums, the rabbis and the Fathers are quoted as early readers: they show how the texts were read, not what the texts mean. Further sections take up why anything besides God exists, God’s attributes, good and evil, the conquest of Canaan, terrorism and religious extremism, man, wine, plants and desire, demons and possession, salvation, what of the Law applies after Christ, a happy life, hell, heaven, Israel after the Son, and the mysteries the texts leave open; the Masoretic change at Deuteronomy 32:8, A Course in Miracles, the Hermetic writings with the Emerald Tablet, gnosis, the Quran on Jesus, tablets older than the biblical books, the inscriptions, scrolls and excavations set beside the texts’ history, time and science before Adam, physics, the newer schools of thought, words read today in another sense, and questions skeptics often ask are weighed in sections of their own.

How to read the marks. Stated gives what a quoted text says: Scripture, or an early reader where the mark names him. Measured gives what the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek wording itself shows, counted in the corpora named under Sources. A shared word is counted, because a common word proves little; where a rare shared word or phrase bears weight, its count is set beside what chance would give, and a pattern sought after a parallel was noticed proves less than its count. A few Measured lines count words in an English text, and say so. Inference marks a link that no text states, with its premises and its strength. Strengths rank support; they are not probabilities. Each inference takes one grade: follows, a valid deduction from stated premises, any premise that only fixes the meaning of a word being named where it is used; strong, at least two independent supports beyond nearness or a common word, and no rival of comparable support; moderate, one such support, and no rival of comparable support; a reading, such support, and a rival of comparable support, the texts not deciding; weak, nearness or a common word only. Two supports are independent when either would stand without the other: two texts, or two features of a text, not one feature counted twice; an early reader is a witness to how a text was read, not a support for what it means (R1), though his quotation can witness the wording of the text he had. A conclusion drawn by valid steps from inferred premises takes its grade from them: no stronger than the weakest, and one step weaker when two or more stand at that grade, since its rival, that at least one of them fails, draws on each. Where independent routes each give a conclusion, each route counts as one support. Verdicts on rival claims stand outside the scale: ruled out, where a stated text contradicts the claim; no evidence or not supported, where nothing quoted bears it out; not shown, where the evidence stops short of it; not evidence, for a source that cannot bear on the question; and no conflict or reconciled in the texts, where a clash dissolves. Weaker marks the losing side of a weighed pair, and open what the texts leave unanswered. Measured by others gives what the sciences and archaeology have measured, counted, dated or found, quoted from their reports as a witness, not a premise; other modern voices are quoted as background. An Inference may recall its premises with their marks before it grades the link it draws. Four inferences are numbered as joints, the links on which the story turns; two local inferences also bear weight, and are named where the joints are weighed (Where inference enters). The four reading rules, R1 to R4, are set out under The sequence as a conditional proof.

Skim the gold. It marks the words that carry each passage and each verdict. The emphasis is ours; no quoted word is changed.

Prior work. The storyline traced here was set out in full by Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Lexham, 2015), with earlier work on its parts: George W. E. Nickelsburg on Dan, Hermon and Caesarea Philippi (Journal of Biblical Literature 100, 1981); Gregory A. Boyd, God at War (1997), on the judging of the gods; and Jean Daniélou, The Angels and Their Mission (1957), on the Fathers’ angels of the nations. Its central link is ancient: Jubilees states an allotment of the nations to spirits (15:31–32), and Origen and Eusebius read Deuteronomy 32:8 as one, as does Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, whose present form is early medieval. This study re-checks each link against the texts and grades it.

Method. Every quotation was matched by script to its source text, every count was re-run from the corpora, and the deductions entered were checked with a solver. A matched quotation proves only that it is quoted accurately, so every interpretation is marked and graded, contested readings are labeled readings, and “If a joint fails” (The sequence as a conditional proof) shows what changes for a reader who rejects any link. Bible passages are quoted from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), which reads “sons of God” at Deuteronomy 32:8, as the ESV does; other works are quoted from the translations named beside them. LORD in capitals renders the divine name YHWH. Verse numbers follow English Bibles; the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek numbering differs in a few places.

Deuteronomy 4:35 You were shown these things so that you would know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides Him.

Deuteronomy 4:39 Know therefore this day and take to heart that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.

Isaiah 44:6 Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.

Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

Psalm 83:18 May they know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth.

Stated. The LORD alone is God “in heaven above and on the earth below”. He is “the first” and “the last”, God “from everlasting to everlasting”, and “Most High over all the earth”.

Measured. In 4:35 and 4:39 the LORD is hāʾĕlōhîm, with the article: ‘the God’. Isaiah 44:6, “there is no God but Me”, Isaiah 45:5, 21 and 46:9 and the Song’s own “there is no God besides Me” (Deuteronomy 32:39) have ʾĕlōhîm without it. And the article marks no denial: in Exodus 21:6 hāʾĕlōhîm is what the BSB renders “the judges”.

Inference.

• What “there is no other” denies, the article cannot settle, since three of these texts lack it; the reading rule R2 settles it. The same chapter has the LORD apportion the host of heaven to the nations (4:19; step 8); Psalm 82:6 has God address others as ʾĕlōhîm, ‘gods’ (step 11); and the Song calls the nations’ gods “demons” (Deuteronomy 32:17), to whom “the sacrifices of pagans are offered” (1 Corinthians 10:20). Read as denying every being a text calls a god, “there is no other” would contradict those texts; read as denying a second who is God as the LORD is God, it does not (check 1b, in The sequence as a conditional proof, shows the first reading inconsistent with Psalm 82:6 and with Deuteronomy 32:17, and the second consistent with both). The Song itself holds the two together: the poem that says “there is no God besides Me” has Israel sacrifice “to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known”. And “Before Me no god was formed” (Isaiah 43:10) uses the verb of the smith’s idol, “Who fashions a god” (yāṣar ʾēl, 44:10): it denies a fashioned god beside the LORD. The rival reads the denial as one of the gods’ reality, for Israel will “serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell” (4:28). That holds of the images, and Paul keeps both sides: “an idol is nothing at all in the world” (1 Corinthians 8:4), and the sacrifices go to demons (10:20). Strong: no second who is God, not no being called a god.
• The word “uncreated” does not occur in these texts. It follows in one step: the LORD is “the first” and “has made all things” (step 3), which its passage reads of all that came to be (R3), and nothing is made by itself, a premise that fixes only the meaning of the words; so nothing made him. Follows (check 1a).

In need of nothing.

• Stated. Paul tells Athens that God “made the world and everything in it” and is not “served by human hands, as if He needed anything” (Acts 17:24–25). The elders in Revelation give the reason anything exists: “by Your will they exist and came to be” (4:11).

Everywhere present, almighty, all-knowing and good. The later words omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent are not in these texts; what those words mean is said of the LORD.

• Measured. The KJV’s “Omnipotent” renders παντοκράτωρ, ‘ruler of all’, which the BSB renders “the Almighty”. The word occurs in 173 Septuagint verses, where it renders both ‘the LORD of Hosts’ (as in 2 Samuel 7:8) and Job’s šadday (as in Job 5:17), and in 10 New Testament verses.
• Goodness includes justice. The LORD is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness”, “Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:6–7); “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” (Genesis 18:25).
• No contradiction. The attacks on these four, and the texts that answer them, are set out under God’s attributes below. The solver shows where each attack’s contradiction lies, in a premise the attack adds (checks 4a–4e); whether that premise is true is argued there, in the prose.

Job 38:4, 7 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Psalm 89:5–7 The heavens praise Your wonders, O LORD— Your faithfulness as well— in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can compare with the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD? In the council of the holy ones, God is greatly feared, and awesome above all who surround Him.

Nehemiah 9:6 You alone are the LORD. You created the heavens, the highest heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to all things, and the host of heaven worships You.

Psalm 148:2, 5 Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. … Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He gave the command and they were created.

Colossians 1:16 For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him.

Jubilees 2:2 (Charles, 1913) For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him -the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds …

Stated. The sons of God shout for joy as the earth’s foundations are laid, so they already exist when it is founded. Psalm 89 sets “the heavenly beings” in “the assembly of the holy ones” and “the council of the holy ones”, and none of them is “like the LORD”. The LORD created “the highest heavens with all their host”; the angels praise him, “for He gave the command and they were created”; Colossians counts “rulers or authorities” among created things; and Jubilees dates the angels to the first day.

Measured.

• Psalm 89:5–7 names the company three ways in parallel: qĕhal qĕdōšîm, ‘assembly of holy ones’; bĕnê ʾēlîm, ‘sons of gods’, which the BSB renders “heavenly beings”; and sôd qĕdōšîm, ‘council of holy ones’.
• The exact phrase bĕnê (hā)ʾĕlōhîm, ‘sons of God’, occurs in five verses of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis 6:2, 4 and Job 1:6, 2:1 and 38:7. In Job it is always the company before the LORD, and Greek Job renders all three as angels: οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ, ‘the angels of God’ (1:6; 2:1), and πάντες ἄγγελοί μου, “All my angels” (38:7). The cognate bĕnê ʾēlîm occurs at Psalm 29:1 and 89:6. Men are called God’s sons in other wording: bānîm … laYHWH, “sons of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1), and bĕnê ʾēl-ḥāy, ‘sons of the living God’ (Hosea 1:10).
• The created “rulers or authorities” of Colossians 1:16 are ἀρχαί and ἐξουσίαι, the pair that Colossians 2:15 says were disarmed (step 15).

Inference.

• That the sons of God belong to the created host is inferred, on two supports: Job 38:7 sets them beside the morning stars, of the host that Psalm 148 and Nehemiah 9:6 say was created; and Colossians 1:16 counts among created things all “things in heaven”, the “invisible” among them, where Psalm 89 sets the heavenly beings “in the skies” (89:6). That Greek Job calls them angels is an early reading (R1), not a third support. Strong.
• That Job’s sons of God and Psalm 89’s heavenly beings are one company rests on cognate names, bĕnê ʾĕlōhîm and bĕnê ʾēlîm, and on their heavenly setting. Strong. Psalm 82’s gods are weighed at Joint 2 (step 11).
• That the powers disarmed in Colossians 2:15 are among those created in 1:16 rests on the same two words in one letter. Strong.

Genesis 1:26–27 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, …” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. …”

1 Kings 22:19–20 … I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left. And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to march up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one suggested this, and another that.

Daniel 4:13, 17 As I lay on my bed, I also saw in the visions of my mind a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. … This decision is the decree of the watchers, the verdict declared by the holy ones, so that the living will know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom He wishes, …

Isaiah 6:8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” …

Isaiah 44:24 … “I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by Myself spread out the earth, …

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 1:26 (Maher, 1992, pp. 19–20) And God said to the angels who minister before him, who were created on the second day of the creation of the world, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, …

Stated. God speaks in the plural: “Let Us make man”, “like one of Us”, “Who will go for Us?” In 1 Kings 22 the LORD sits enthroned with “all the host of heaven standing by Him” and takes their counsel: “one suggested this, and another that”. In Daniel a verdict on a king is “the decree of the watchers, the verdict declared by the holy ones”, given “so that the living will know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind”. The council deliberates and decrees; the rule is the Most High’s. Of the making: “God created” man, and the LORD “alone stretched out the heavens”.

Measured.

• Genesis 1:26 sets a singular verb of speaking before plural words: wayyōʾmer, ‘and he said’, then naʿăśeh, ‘let us make’, bĕṣalmēnû, ‘in our image’, and kidmûtēnû, ‘after our likeness’. Verse 27 returns to the singular for the act: wayyibrāʾ, ‘and he created’, bĕṣalmô, ‘in his image’.
• Genesis 3:22’s “like one of Us” is kĕʾaḥad mimmennû. The same letters and vowels give ‘from us’ and ‘from him’ or ‘from it’, as in 2:17’s “of it”; the OSHB tags both verses first plural, so the tag does not decide. The Greek has ὡς εἷς ἐξ ἡμῶν, ‘as one of us’. Targum Onqelos reads ‘from him’: yĕḥîdāy bĕʿalmāʾ minnēh, ‘alone in the world, of himself’; and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, “Adam is sole on the earth, as I am sole in the heavens above” (tr. Etheridge). In Isaiah 6:8 one speaker says ʾešlaḥ, ‘I send’, and lānû, ‘for us’. Genesis 11:7’s hābâ nērdâ, ‘come, let us go down’, answers the builders’ hābâ nibneh, ‘come, let us build’ (11:4).
• Daniel’s “watchers” are ʿîrîn in Aramaic (4:17; Aramaic numbering 4:14), and the “watcher” of 4:13 is ʿîr.

Where readers differ: whom “Us” includes.

• The council. Philo reads “Let us make man” as showing “an assumption of other beings to himself as assistants” (On the Creation 75, tr. Yonge). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, whose present form is early medieval, gives the plural to “the angels who minister before him”; of the four Targums of Genesis 1:26, Maher notes, “only Ps.-J. has been influenced by this midrash”, a reading that arose because the plural “might be taken to indicate that there is a plurality in the Godhead”. Genesis Rabbah 8:4 has R. Ḥanina say that God took counsel with the ministering angels; Rashi gives the reason, that man is in the angels’ likeness and they might envy him, and adds that they did not help him create.
• God deliberating. Gesenius’ grammar judges that the plural “is best explained as a plural of self-deliberation”, though it grants that in Isaiah 6:8, with Genesis 3:22, the plural includes the attendant angels (Kautzsch–Cowley, 1910, §124g, note).
• A plural of majesty. The same grammar rejects it: the plural in Genesis 1:26 “has been incorrectly explained in this way”, and “The use of the plural as a form of respectful address is quite foreign to Hebrew.”
• The Father and the Son. Barnabas has the words spoken “while He speaks to the Son” (Epistle of Barnabas 6, ANF). Theophilus: “to no one else than to His own Word and wisdom did He say” (To Autolycus 2.18, ANF). Irenaeus: “For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks” (Against Heresies 4.20.1, ANF). Justin, below, reports and rejects a teaching that “the human frame was the workmanship of angels”.
• The plural answered beside it. In the Talmud Rabbi Yoḥanan holds that wherever “the heretics attempt to prove their heresy, i.e., that there is more than one god, the response to their claim is alongside them”, and gives first “Let us make man in our image” against “And God created man in His image” (Sanhedrin 38b).
• When the angels were made. Jubilees creates them on the first day and the Targum on the second; both put them before humankind.

Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 62 (ANF) … or that the teachers of it can prove that [God] spoke to angels, or that the human frame was the workmanship of angels. But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; …

Inference.

• Genesis does not say whom its “Us” includes, and the grammar sets aside only the plural of majesty. Three readings stand. The council has the parallels of 1 Kings 22 and Isaiah 6, where Gesenius grants that the plural takes in the attendant angels, and the Jewish readers. A plurality within God has the Fathers and, in the canon, “All things were created through Him” (Colossians 1:16). One speaker deliberating with himself is Gesenius’s own first choice, and 3:22’s mimmennû can be read with it, ‘from him’, as the Targums read it. A reading.
• On every reading the making is God’s alone: 1:27’s verb and pronoun are singular; the LORD “alone stretched out the heavens” (Isaiah 44:24); and “Did not one God create us?” (Malachi 2:10). On the Father-and-Son reading the making is “through Him”, and it is God’s alone on the premise that the Son is God (Gap 3). That the angels did not help is said by readers who hear the council in the plural: early readers (R1), not supports. Strong.
• Daniel’s watchers are holy members of the council, and Jubilees gives the same title to the fathers of the spirits, “Thy Watchers” (10:5; step 6). That the title marks one order of beings, some of whom fell, is inference. Moderate.

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. …

Genesis 3:13–15 … “The serpent deceived me,” she replied, “and I ate.” So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, … And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Wisdom of Solomon 2:23–24 (KJV Apocrypha) For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.

John 8:44 … He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. …

Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. …

Stated. The serpent deceives the woman. Wisdom says that “through envy of the devil came death into the world”, and Jesus calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning”. Revelation calls “the devil and Satan” “that ancient serpent”. Genesis 3:15 sets enmity between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s and foretells a blow to the serpent’s head (step 17).

Measured.

• Revelation’s “ancient serpent” is ὁ ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος (12:9; 20:2), and ὄφις is the serpent of Greek Genesis 3:1. The word is common (34 Septuagint verses), but the woman’s “seed” is not: τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτῆς, ‘her seed’, occurs in the Greek Old Testament only at Genesis 3:15 and in the New Testament only at Revelation 12:17, where the dragon goes “to make war with the rest of her children”.
• Genesis 3:15 uses one verb, šûp, for both blows, to the head and to the heel; the BSB renders it “crush” and “strike”.

Inference. That Revelation’s ancient serpent is the serpent of Eden is inferred from the shared word, from “ancient”, which points back to the beginning, and from the woman’s “seed”, shared only by Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:17. Strong.

Where readers differ: Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Two oracles against kings are often read as the fall of a heavenly being.

• Stated. Isaiah’s song is “against the king of Babylon” (14:4), and Ezekiel’s lament is “for the king of Tyre” (28:12). Yet Isaiah’s “day star, son of the dawn” boasts, “I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly” (14:12–13) and “I will make myself like the Most High” (14:14), and Ezekiel’s king was “in Eden, the garden of God”, “a guardian cherub” who was “on the holy mountain of God” (28:13–14). The same oracle calls him “a man and not a god” (28:2; again 28:9). Origen reads Ezekiel’s lament as spoken of “a certain angel who had received the office of governing the nation of the Tyrians” (step 8). He calls Isaiah’s day star “another opposing power” and adds Jesus’ words, “Behold, I see Satan fallen from heaven like lightning.” (On First Principles 1.5.4–5).
• Measured.
  • Isaiah’s day star is hêlēl ben-šāḥar, ‘shining one, son of dawn’; the Greek has ὁ ἑωσφόρος, ‘the dawn-bringer’, and the Vulgate “Lucifer”, the Latin ‘light-bearer’, from which the name comes.
  • Isaiah’s “stars of God” is kôkbê ʾēl. After a noun, ʾēl can mark the superlative, as in ʾarzê-ʾēl, “the mighty cedars” (Psalm 80:10), so the phrase may mean ‘the highest stars’; the closer tie to the council is 14:14’s ʿelyôn, ‘Most High’. His “mount of assembly” is har môʿēd, a different word for assembly from Psalm 82:1’s ʿădat.
  • In Ezekiel 28:14 the Hebrew vowels make the king the cherub: ʾat kĕrûb, ‘you were a cherub’. The Greek reads the same consonants as ‘with’: μετὰ τοῦ χερουβ ἔθηκά σε, ‘I set you with the cherub’, and in 28:16 the cherub drives him out (ἤγαγέν σε τὸ χερουβ).
  • Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”, shares ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ‘from heaven’, with Greek Isaiah 14:12, each with a verb of falling (πεσόντα; ἐξέπεσεν). The phrase is common (36 New Testament verses), so the link shows at most an echo.
• A reading. The oracles name human kings, and Ezekiel’s calls its king a man. Reading them as a heavenly fall is Origen’s reading, not the oracles’ own words, and nothing in the sequence rests on it.

Genesis 6:2, 4 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose. … The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.

1 Enoch 6:2 (Charles, 1913) And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'

1 Enoch 6:6 (Charles, 1913) And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.

Josephus, Antiquities 1.73 (Whiston) For many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength; for the tradition is, that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.

Jude 6–7 And the angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day. In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.

2 Peter 2:4–5 For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, …

Jude 14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them: “Behold, the Lord is coming with myriads of His holy ones …

1 Enoch 1:9 (Charles, 1913) And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones To execute judgement upon all, …

Stated. The sons of God take human wives, and their children become “the mighty men of old”. 1 Enoch tells the story of “the angels, the children of the heaven”, who came down “on the summit of Mount Hermon”, and Josephus of “angels of God” whose sons “did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants”. Jude and 2 Peter speak of angels who sinned and are held in chains for judgment; Jude sets beside them Sodom and Gomorrah, which “pursued strange flesh” “In like manner”; and Jude 14 gives a prophecy of “Enoch, the seventh from Adam”. 1 Enoch’s message to the fallen is addressed to “the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place” (12:4).

Measured.

• Greek Genesis 6:4 calls the Nephilim οἱ γίγαντες, ‘the giants’.
• Jude 7’s “In like manner” is τὸν ὅμοιον τρόπον τούτοις, ‘in the same way as these’. τούτοις is masculine or neuter. Of the words before it, Σόδομα is a neuter plural and Γόμορρα here a feminine singular, and ‘the cities’ and their participles are feminine; so ‘these’ can be the angels of verse 6, the intruders of verses 4 and 8, as some read it, or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Calvin takes the last: “I do not apply these words to the Israelites and the angels, but to Sodom and Gomorrha”, and “It is no objection that the pronoun τούτοις is masculine, for Jude refers to the inhabitants and not to the places.” (Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, tr. Owen).

Inference. That the angels of Jude are the sons of God of Genesis 6 is inferred, on two supports: Jude’s angels “abandoned their proper dwelling”, as 1 Enoch’s Watchers “have left the high heaven”; and Jude’s prophecy of Enoch is the one 1 Enoch 1:9 gives, “with myriads of His holy ones” against “with ten thousands of His holy ones”, in the book that tells Genesis 6 as a story of angels. Strong. That Jude ties their sin to going after “strange flesh” holds if ‘these’ are the angels, not if they are the people of Sodom: a reading. That 2 Peter’s angels are the same rests on their place beside the Flood, without the Enochic wording. Moderate.

Where readers differ.

• Angels. 1 Enoch and Josephus, the two texts quoted here that retell Genesis 6, read the sons of God as angels, and Jude follows 1 Enoch. So does the Qumran Book of Giants, a retelling of the Watchers’ story in ten manuscripts that “affiliates the names of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh and the monster Humbaba with the Watchers and giants” (Wikipedia, “The Book of Giants”, after Stuckenbruck 1997).
• Men of Seth’s line. Julius Africanus, in the third century, read “the angels of heaven” in his text and found “the sons of God” only “In some copies”; he took them to mean that “the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him” (Chronography, ANF). Augustine: “I could by no means believe that God's holy angels could at that time have so fallen”, and he reads 2 Peter’s angels as those who fell with the devil at first (City of God 15.23, tr. Dods).
• Rulers or judges. Targum Onqelos and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan read bĕnê rabrĕbayyāʾ, ‘sons of the great ones’, though Pseudo-Jonathan still names, at 6:4, “Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven” (tr. Etheridge); in Genesis Rabbah 26:5 R. Shimon bar Yochai calls them bĕnê dayyānayyāʾ, ‘sons of the judges’, and curses anyone who calls them ‘sons of God’; and two scholars report ‘sons of the judges’ in Targum Neofiti as well (Newman, Grace Theological Journal 5, 1984), which is not checked here.
• Against the human readings. The exact Hebrew phrase is used only of the heavenly court outside Genesis 6 (step 2), and Jude, who quotes 1 Enoch, joins the angels’ sin to Sodom’s “strange flesh” if ‘these’ in 1:7 are the angels.

Background. No joint rests on this step. It records how Jubilees continues the story, and where the Bible mentions the Nephilim again.

Jubilees 10:5 (Charles, 1913) And Thou knowest how Thy Watchers, the fathers of these spirits, acted in my day: and as for these spirits which are living, imprison them and hold them fast in the place of condemnation, …

Jubilees 10:8 (Charles, 1913) And the chief of the spirits, Mastêmâ, came and said: 'Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them harken to my voice, and do all that I shall say unto them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men; …'

Jubilees 10:9 (Charles, 1913) And He said: Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the place of condemnation.'

Jubilees 10:11 (Charles, 1913) And we did according to all His words: all the malignant evil ones we bound in the place of condemnation and a tenth part of them we left that they might be subject before Satan on the earth.

Stated by Jubilees alone. The Watchers are “the fathers of these spirits”. At the plea of “the chief of the spirits, Mastêmâ”, a tenth are left “before him” and nine parts are bound. The angels then report that the tenth was left “subject before Satan on the earth”. Elsewhere Jubilees gives Mastema the accuser’s work of Job 1–2: “the prince Mastêmâ came and said before God” (17:16), and at the Exodus he “was bound and imprisoned behind the children of Israel that he might not accuse them” (48:15).

Inference. The tenth left before Mastema is the tenth left subject before Satan, and Mastema does the satan’s work of accusing before God, so Jubilees gives the leader of the spirits two names. Strong.

The Nephilim after the Flood. Genesis puts the Nephilim on the earth “in those days—and afterward as well” (6:4).

Numbers 13:32–33 So they gave the Israelites a bad report about the land that they had spied out: … We even saw the Nephilim there—the descendants of Anak that come from the Nephilim! …

Joshua 12:4–5 And Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived in Ashtaroth and Edrei. He ruled over Mount Hermon, Salecah, all of Bashan …

• Stated. The spies sent into Canaan report “the descendants of Anak that come from the Nephilim”. Deuteronomy says of the Emites, “Like the Anakites, they were also regarded as Rephaim” (2:11). Joshua names Og of Bashan “one of the remnant of the Rephaim” and says that he “ruled over Mount Hermon”.
• Measured. The Hebrew nĕfîlîm occurs only at Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. Brenton’s Greek of Numbers 13:33 calls them τοὺς γίγαντας, the word of Greek Genesis 6:4 (step 5), and has no clause on Anak’s descendants: “And there we saw the giants”. γίγας is the Septuagint’s general word for the mighty (38 verses): it renders Nimrod’s gibbôr (Genesis 10:8), the Rephaim (Joshua 12:4) and the Anakim (Deuteronomy 1:28), so the Greek word alone ties nothing to Genesis 6. Ezekiel 32:27 comes nearer. Its gibbôrîm nōfĕlîm, ‘fallen mighty men’, has the consonants of Genesis 6:4’s nĕfilîm (נפלים) beside that verse’s gibbôrîm, and the Greek reads “the giants that fell of old” (μετὰ τῶν γιγάντων τῶν πεπτωκότων ἀπ’ αἰῶνος), taking the Hebrew’s mēʿărēlîm, ‘of the uncircumcised’, as mēʿôlām, ‘of old’, the word of Genesis 6:4’s “mighty men of old”; the BSB follows it, “the fallen warriors of old”. γίγαντες and ἀπ’ αἰῶνος stand together in the Greek Old Testament only there and in Genesis 6:4.
• Inference. The chain runs from the Nephilim to the Anakites, from the Anakites to the Rephaim, and from the Rephaim to Og, who ruled Hermon, where 1 Enoch sets the Watchers’ descent (step 5). It is thin at every link: the Nephilim appear in a “bad report”, and the Greek lacks the Anakite clause; Deuteronomy counts the Anakites among the Rephaim without making every Rephaite a son of the Nephilim; and no text says how the Nephilim outlived the Flood. Ezekiel 32:27 sets fallen mighty men of old in Sheol; that it recalls Genesis 6:4 rests on the consonants and, in Greek, on the words, while its Hebrew reads ‘of the uncircumcised’. A reading; nothing else rests on it.

Genesis 11:6–9 And the LORD said, “… Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it is called Babel, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 10:32 All these are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their generations and nations. From these the nations of the earth spread out after the flood.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 11:7–8 (Etheridge, 1862) And the Lord said to the seventy angels which stand before Him, Come, we will descend and will there commingle their language, that a man shall not understand the speech of his neighbour. And the Word of the Lord was revealed against the city, and with Him seventy angels, having reference to seventy nations, each having its own language, and thence the writing of its own hand: and He dispersed them from thence upon the face of all the earth into seventy languages. …

Jubilees 10:23 (Charles, 1913) And the Lord descended, and we descended with him to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built.

Origen, Against Celsus 5.29 (ANF) … our prophet of God and His genuine servant Moses, in his song in the book of Deuteronomy, makes a statement regarding the portioning out of the earth in the following terms: “When the Most High divided the nations, …” And regarding the distribution of the nations, the same Moses, in his work entitled Genesis, thus expresses himself in the style of a historical narrative: “And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech; …”

Stated. The LORD says, “Come, let Us go down and confuse their language”, and scatters the builders “over the face of all the earth”. Genesis 10 has already named the nations that “spread out after the flood”. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes the “Us” “the seventy angels which stand before Him”, one for each of “seventy nations”, and in Jubilees the angels “descended with him”. Origen sets Deuteronomy 32:8, on “the portioning out of the earth”, beside the Babel story, on “the distribution of the nations”.

Measured.

• In Hebrew the peoples “separated” (10:5) and “spread out” (10:32) by one verb, prd (nifrĕdû), the verb of “when He divided” (bĕhafrîdô) in Deuteronomy 32:8. prd stands in 26 verses of the Hebrew Bible and gôyim, ‘nations’, in 511; the two stand together in four: Genesis 10:5, 10:32 and 25:23, and Deuteronomy 32:8. Chance would put them together in about 0.6 verses (26 × 511 ÷ 23,213 verses), and four or more about 3 times in 1,000. The pattern was sought after the parallel was noticed, so it was checked two ways. Counting ʿammîm, ‘peoples’, as well, which 32:8 itself uses, prd stands with the nations in seven verses against 2.3 expected (about 1 in 100), Esther 3:8 among them. And of the 23,118 verses outside Genesis 10:1–11:9 and its copy in 1 Chronicles 1, 65, about 3 in 1,000, share with that passage a pair of content words as rare as this one.
• Where Brenton’s English of Deuteronomy 32:8 has “he separated the sons of Adam”, the Greek verb is διέσπειρεν, ‘scattered’, the verb of “the LORD scattered them” at Babel (Genesis 11:8–9). The verb is common (66 Septuagint verses, mostly of exile), but Greek Genesis uses it six times for the scattering after the Flood: 9:19; 10:18, 32; 11:4, 8, 9.
• Greek Genesis 10:25 says that in Peleg’s days “the earth was divided” (διεμερίσθη), the verb Greek Deuteronomy 32:8 uses for the Most High dividing the nations (διεμέριζεν). Behind the Greek stand two different Hebrew verbs, niplĕgâ (plg) and bĕhanḥēl (nḥl), and the Greek verb is common (18 Septuagint verses besides the copy in the Odes), so this link lives in the Greek only and is at most an echo.

Inference. Deuteronomy 32:8 does not say when the Most High divided the nations. That it looks back to the division told in Genesis 10–11, and so stands after Babel in the story’s order, rests on one support that tells the two apart: the verb prd, which stands with the nations, beyond chance, in Genesis 10 and in 32:8 (Measured, above). The object agrees but does not discriminate: 32:8 divides “the sons of man” into “the peoples”, and Genesis 10 is the canon’s list of the nations, “From these the nations of the earth spread out after the flood” (10:32), but any division of the nations would divide those same nations. The fourth verse is no rival: Genesis 25:23 separates “two peoples” in one womb. The Greek translator read 32:8 so, with the verb of the scattering at Babel, and so do Origen and, in its early medieval form, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: readers, not supports (R1). Moderate. The link places the allotment in the story’s order, after Babel and before Abram; it gives it no date. The allotment covers the nations the texts name; how far the Flood reached decides who those nations were in history, not whether 32:8 looks back to Genesis 10–11 (Physics).

How the witnesses read the end of Deuteronomy 32:8:

The translations that read “Israel” follow a Hebrew text of the Masoretic kind, so they add no weight of their own; the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Torah of a separate community, is the one agreement from another line of the Hebrew text (The Masoretic change). Modern versions differ in turn: the BSB and the ESV read “sons of God”, and the ESV notes: “Compare Dead Sea Scroll, Septuagint; Masoretic Text sons of Israel”.

Behind the scroll Tov sees a possible older wording: “It is possible that בני אלוהים in 4QDeutj developed from an earlier בני אל, the more ancient term which envisions the god El as the father of the younger gods”, which “would also make the MT correction more parsimonious, just adding the letters ישר before אל”; of the Greek, “we do not know if it was rendered from either אלהים or אל” (Tov 2023, n. 6). So the witnesses agree on heavenly beings at 32:8 and leave its oldest Hebrew wording open: bny ʾlhym, ‘sons of God’, as the scroll reads, or bny ʾl, ‘sons of El’. On the second, see Gap 3.

Deuteronomy 32:8–9 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance.

Deuteronomy 4:19–20 When you look to the heavens and see the sun and moon and stars—all the host of heaven—do not be enticed to bow down and worship what the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. Yet the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of His inheritance, as you are today.

Deuteronomy 29:26 They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that the LORD had not given to them.

Deuteronomy 32:17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.

Jubilees 15:31–32 (Charles, 1913) … for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His, and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler, …

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (Etheridge) When the Most High made allotment of the world unto the nations which proceeded from the sons of Noach, in the separation of the writings and languages of the children of men at the time of the division, He cast the lot among the seventy angels, the princes of the nations with whom is the revelation to oversee the city, even at that time He established the limits of the nations according to the sum of the number of the seventy souls of Israel who went down into Mizraim. And when the holy people fell to the lot of the Lord of all the world, Michael opened his lips and said: Let the good portion of the Name of the Lord’s Word be with Him. …

Daniel 10:13 However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.

Daniel 10:20–21 … “I must return at once to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I have gone forth, behold, the prince of Greece will come. … Yet no one has the courage to support me against these, except Michael your prince.

Origen, Homilies on Luke 35.6 (Lienhard, 1996) … Therefore, the earth was divided up among rulers—that is, angels—from the beginning. Daniel attests more clearly that those whom Moses calls “angels” are “rulers” when he writes, “the ruler of the kingdom of the Persians,” and, “the ruler of the kingdom of the Greeks,” and, “Michael, you ruler.” Thus, there are rulers of the nations.

Stated.

• In 4:19–20 the LORD apportions “the sun and moon and stars—all the host of heaven” to “all the nations under heaven”, while Israel is taken “to be the people of His inheritance”. In 32:8–9, in the text the BSB adopts (Joint 1), the Most High sets the peoples’ boundaries “according to the number of the sons of God”, but “the LORD’s portion is His people”.
• Israel’s apostasy is the worship of “gods that the LORD had not given to them”, and the Song calls the gods of the nations “demons” (Demons and possession).
• Daniel shows “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” opposing a heavenly messenger whom Michael, “one of the chief princes”, comes to help, and “the prince of Greece” coming after him. Daniel keeps the prince apart from the kings: the messenger had been left “with the kings of Persia”.
• Stated by early and later readers. Jubilees, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, whose present form is early medieval, and Origen state the allotment outright: “over all hath He placed spirits in authority”; “He cast the lot among the seventy angels, the princes of the nations”; “the earth was divided up among rulers—that is, angels—from the beginning”. Origen identifies Daniel’s princes with the angels of 32:8.

Measured.

• The giving runs one way. In 4:19 the LORD apportions the host to the peoples: ʾăšer ḥālaq YHWH ʾĕlōhêkā ʾōtām lĕkol hāʿammîm, ‘which the LORD your God apportioned them to all the peoples’. In 29:26 (Hebrew 29:25) the gods are those he had not apportioned to Israel, wĕlōʾ ḥālaq lāhem. Deuteronomy never says that the nations were given to the host; it pairs them, and its words for the nations’ side are wĕhištaḥăwîtā, ‘bow down’, and ʿăbadtām, ‘serve them’, the BSB’s “bow down and worship”; 29:26 has the same pair, “served other gods, and they worshiped”. ʿābad is the verb of a servant to his lord. In Deuteronomy the verb ḥālaq occurs only in these two verses.
• “Apportioned” in 4:19 (ḥālaq) and “portion” in 32:9 (ḥēleq) share the root ḥlq, and the root nḥl runs through both passages: 32:8’s “gave the nations their inheritance” is its verb, and “inheritance” in 4:20 and 32:9 is its noun, naḥălâ. The two nouns are a stock pair, though: they stand together in 18 verses, seven of them on the priests and Levites, who have “no portion or inheritance” (Deuteronomy 10:9). What ties 4:19 to the allotment is the verb ḥālaq, used in Deuteronomy only of the host and the gods.
• 32:8’s “according to the number of” is lĕmispar, the phrase of the twelve stones taken “according to the number of the tribes of Israel” (Joshua 4:5): one for each.
• Sirach 17:17, in the Greek of Rahlfs and of Brenton, reads ἑκάστῳ ἔθνει κατέστησεν ἡγούμενον, καὶ μερὶς κυρίου Ἰσραήλ ἐστιν: ‘for every nation he appointed a ruler, and Israel is the Lord’s portion’. The KJV’s fuller opening, “For in the division of the nations of the whole earth”, is not in that Greek. Sirach does not say what the rulers are; in its ten other uses in the book, ἡγούμενος is a human leader.
• Daniel’s title for the princes of Persia, Greece and Israel is śar (10:13, 20, 21; 12:1). The word is common (368 verses), but the phrase ʾaḥad haśśārîm, ‘one of the princes’, occurs in the Hebrew Bible only twice: Daniel 10:13, of Michael, and Psalm 82:7 (step 11). Chance would give it about 0.2 times (twice, about 2 in 100); the tie rests on the article, for ʾeḥād before śar without it would be expected about 1.3 times. Both Greek versions of Daniel 10:13 and the Greek of Psalm 81:7 share εἷς τῶν ἀρχόντων, ‘one of the rulers’.

Joint 1 · The allotment. That the nations are paired with the sons of God, and ruled by them, rests on three premises.

1. The text. 32:8 reads “sons of God”: the Dead Sea Scroll has it, the Greek has heavenly beings in every form that does not follow the Masoretic Hebrew, and the weighing below favors it. Strong, for heavenly beings at 32:8; its oldest Hebrew wording is open (above).
2. The pairing, by either of two routes, each enough alone. Route A needs the text (1) as well, so as a route it joins two strong links and is moderate; route B is moderate. Each route counts as one support, and with two independent routes and no rival of comparable support the pairing is strong.
   • Route A, from 32:8–9: the borders follow the number of the sons of God, “But the LORD’s portion is His people”. Set against Israel, the LORD’s portion, each other people is the portion of one of the sons. The peoples it covers are those 32:8 divides, the nations the texts name (step 7); Deuteronomy 4:19’s “all the nations under heaven” is the wider phrase (route B). Strong, on two features of the verses: their own contrast, and lĕmispar, ‘one for each’ (Joshua 4:5; Measured, above). Sirach 17:17 and Jubilees read it so early, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan later; and the historians read the verses so: “each member of the divine family receives a nation of his own: Israel is the portion of Yahweh” (Smith 2001).
   • Route B, from 4:19 and 29:26: the LORD apportioned the host of heaven to the peoples and gave them gods he did not give Israel; those gods belong to the heavenly company of step 2, for kol ṣĕbāʾ haššāmayim, ‘all the host of heaven’, also names the council standing by the LORD’s throne (1 Kings 22:19). That step is moderate: 4:19 defines its host as “the sun and moon and stars”, and some readers take them as lights only (below). Route B does not need 32:8’s wording, but it gives the pairing no place in the story: 4:19 does not say when the host was apportioned, and to take it as 32:8’s division would need a further link, resting on the root ḥlq that 4:19’s verb shares with 32:9’s noun, a stock pair (Measured, above): weak.
3. The rule. Deuteronomy pairs, and its word for the nations’ side is service, the verb of a servant to his lord (Measured, above); it does not say that the paired beings govern. Daniel does, for the nations it names: Persia and Greece have heavenly princes, kept apart from their kings (10:13, 20), and Israel has Michael (10:21; 12:1). That the sons of 32:8, one for each people, rule as such princes over every people is inference. Daniel’s princes are one support, for three peoples, all in Israel’s story; the reach to every people comes from the pairing itself, one son for each people (route A). Isaiah 24:21 agrees: the LORD punishes “the host of heaven above” together with “the kings of the earth below”, a heavenly company judged beside the rulers of the whole earth, though it judges them together without saying that the one rules the other. In Daniel 4:17 the council’s decree falls on a king “so that the living will know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind” (step 3): the rule there is the Most High’s. The rival, that heavenly princes are attested only for the powers in Israel’s story, is live. Moderate. Daniel was finished, on the record, in the 160s BC (Skeptics’ questions, 20); read as one canon (R1), the book’s date does not change what it states. Sirach’s ‘ruler’ for every nation, a human leader elsewhere in the book (Measured, above), shows only that the contrast with Israel was read early.

Joint 1, the pairing with the rule, is moderate: the pairing is strong and the rule moderate. Set with step 7’s link, which places it after Babel in the story’s order (moderate), the beginning is a reading, since two of its needed links stand at moderate (How to read the marks). If Joint 1 failed, the end of the story would still stand (The sequence as a conditional proof); its beginning would be lost. Jubilees and Origen state the result, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in its early medieval form, which shows the reading is old, not that the text means it.

Where readers differ: “sons of God” or “children of Israel”?

• For “children of Israel”. The Masoretic Text reads it, with the versions that follow it, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains the number: the borders follow “the sum of the number of the seventy souls of Israel who went down into Mizraim”, Jacob’s household of “seventy in all” (Genesis 46:27), set against the seventy descendants of Noah’s sons that Genesis 10 names (Gap 2).
• For “sons of God”. The Dead Sea Scroll reads it; the Greek has heavenly beings in every form that does not follow the Masoretic Hebrew, ‘sons of God’ in what Wevers and McClellan judge its earliest form, a choice Tov calls bold (“Wevers daringly includes this reading”), and “angels of God” in most copies; Deuteronomy’s own parallel pairs the nations with “all the host of heaven” (4:19), not with Israel; and a scribe would not have turned “sons of Israel” into “sons of God” (The Masoretic change).
• The story’s order. Step 7 sets the division of 32:8 after the Flood, with the scattering at Babel, before Abram was called (Genesis 12:1) and Jacob was named Israel (Genesis 32:28). On the Masoretic reading the borders then follow the number of “the children of Israel”, a people not yet in existence, and the Targum makes that number the household that went down into Egypt. Himbaza notes that the reading needed explaining: the correction “n’est pas sans difficultés”, for the classical Jewish writings “ont dû expliquer à quoi correspond exactement ce chiffre” (‘is not without difficulties … had to explain exactly what this number corresponds to’; Himbaza 2002, 547). But the order bears on both readings alike: on either, 32:9 gives the LORD “Jacob His allotted inheritance” at the division, before Jacob was born, and within this scope the LORD declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). Not evidence for either reading. The reading “sons of God” rests on the witnesses (premise 1): strong; the Masoretic reading remains the weaker alternative.
• The split at 32:43. A second Qumran manuscript, 4QDeutq, has six lines at 32:43 where the Masoretic Text has four. One of its extra lines is wĕhištaḥăwû lô kol ʾĕlōhîm, ‘and bow down to him, all gods’, the words the Masoretic Text keeps at Psalm 97:7, “Worship Him, all you gods!”; Tigay renders the scroll’s line “Bow to Him, all divinities” (quoted in Heiser 2001, 58). The other, wĕlimśanʾāyw yĕšallēm, ‘and those who hate him he will repay’, names no divine being. The Greek has both lines too: προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες υἱοὶ θεοῦ, ‘let all the sons of God worship him’, and τοῖς μισοῦσιν ἀνταποδώσει, ‘he will repay those who hate him’ (Rahlfs). So the Masoretic Text is shorter at 32:43 by more than the divine line. Grades: a deliberate change at 32:8, strong; that the 32:43 differences belong to the same revision, a reading. The motive is weighed under The Masoretic change.

Joint 4. That the LORD is not one of the sons of God among whom the nations were divided is not stated in 32:8–9, and 32:8–9 read alone does not decide it (Gap 3). In the canon it has four routes, set out with their premises under Gap 3: the Song’s own “there is no God besides Me” (32:39), read as step 1 reads the denials; Psalm 83:18, which names the Most High the LORD; Psalm 89:6–8, where the heavenly beings surround him, with step 2’s identity of the company; and step 2’s created host against the uncreated LORD (step 1). Job 42:2 supports it on a premise no text states, and Psalm 97:9 agrees with it but cannot establish it. Strong, in the canon and in the Song read whole; for 32:8–9 alone, a reading.

Where readers differ: the host of 4:19.

• Lights, not beings. The verse names its host “the sun and moon and stars”. Greek Deuteronomy renders it πάντα τὸν κόσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ‘all the array of heaven’ (also 17:3), where Greek 1 Kings 22:19 has ἡ στρατιὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ‘the army of heaven’. The Talmud lists, among the changes the translators made for King Ptolemy, a 4:19 that adds lĕhāʾîr, ‘to give light’: the LORD apportioned them to give light to all the peoples (Megillah 9b). Rashi gives that explanation first, and the Vulgate has the stars “created for the service of all the nations” (Douay-Rheims).
• Beings worshiped as gods. In 29:26 Deuteronomy uses the same verb of “gods”, and 17:3 sets “the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven” beside “other gods”. Rashi’s second explanation has them assigned “as deities”, but for a judgment, not a rule: “He did not prevent them from going astray after them, but He allowed them to err (to slip) through vain speculations, in order to drive them out from the world” (citing Avodah Zarah 55a; tr. Rosenbaum and Silbermann). It says nothing of the host as living beings. The same Hebrew phrase, kol ṣĕbāʾ haššāmayim, ‘all the host of heaven’, names the council standing by the LORD’s throne (1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chronicles 18:18) as well as what Israel worshiped (2 Kings 21:3; 23:4–5), and stars act: “From the heavens the stars fought” (Judges 5:20).
• A reading, for 4:19 alone. The pairing does not depend on it (route A).

Where readers differ: Daniel’s princes. Calvin took the prince of Persia to be the Persian king himself: “the angel stood in direct opposition and conflict against Cambyses” (Commentary on Daniel, tr. Myers). The Old Greek of Daniel calls the prince ὁ στρατηγὸς βασιλέως Περσῶν, ‘the commander of the king of the Persians’, and Michael ὁ ἄγγελος, ‘the angel’ (10:21). Against a human prince: the prince withstands a heavenly messenger, Michael is “one of the chief princes” by the same title, and the verse keeps the prince apart from “the kings of Persia”. Strong, for heavenly princes.

Where readers differ: does an angel govern Israel?

• No angel. Jubilees 15:32: “over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit”.
• Michael. Daniel calls Michael “your prince” and “the great prince who stands watch over your people” (10:21; 12:1). In the Targum, Michael speaks at the allotment, and Origen counts him among the “rulers of the nations” (“Michael, you ruler”).
• The greatest archangel. The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, a fourth-century work that survives in Rufinus’ Latin and in Syriac, give the worshipers of the Most High to “the one among the archangels who is greatest”.

Recognitions 2.42 (ANF) For the Most High God, who alone holds the power of all things, has divided all the nations of the earth into seventy-two parts, and over these He hath appointed angels as princes. But to the one among the archangels who is greatest, was committed the government of those who, before all others, received the worship and knowledge of the Most High God.

Verdict. In the canon Michael is Israel’s prince, “the great prince who stands watch over your people” (Daniel 10:21; 12:1), and Israel is the LORD’s own portion (Deuteronomy 32:9): a prince who guards it under the LORD who owns it, not its owner. Strong. Jubilees’ ‘no angel’ and the Recognitions’ archangel are early readers (R1). Israel after the Son is taken up under Israel.

Genesis 12:1, 3 Then the LORD said to Abram, “… and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 18:18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

Galatians 3:8 The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Stated. In the narrative that follows Babel, God calls one man and promises that “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you”. Paul calls the promise the gospel: Scripture “foretold the gospel to Abraham”.

Measured.

• The “families” of 12:3 (mišpĕḥōt) are the word for the “clans” of the nations in Genesis 10:5 and 10:32. The word is common (224 verses); the whole phrase, kol mišpĕḥōt hāʾădāmâ, ‘all the families of the earth’, occurs only three times: in the promise to Abraham (12:3), in the promise to Jacob (28:14), and in Amos 3:2, “Only you have I known from all the families of the earth”. Chance would give mišpĕḥōt before hāʾădāmâ about 0.2 times; three is about 2 in 1,000.
• Paul’s “All nations” is πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, the Greek of Genesis 18:18; Greek Genesis 12:3 has πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς, ‘all the tribes of the earth’. ἔθνη is the word for the nations divided in Greek Deuteronomy 32:8, but it is one of the commonest nouns of the Greek Bible (889 Septuagint verses, 148 in the New Testament), so it ties Galatians to the verse Paul quotes, not to Deuteronomy.

Inference. That the promise answers the scattering of step 7 rests on the narrative’s own bridge: Genesis tells the call of Abram after the nations are scattered (11:9), once Shem’s line has been traced to him (11:10–32; 12:1), and the call promises the blessing to the families, the word for the clans the Table lists. The word is common, so the bridge is the one support. Moderate. Israel, chosen for that blessing, is taken up under Israel.

Job 1:6–7 One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. “Where have you come from?” said the LORD to Satan. …

Job 1:12 “Very well,” said the LORD to Satan. “Everything he has is in your hands, but you must not lay a hand on the man himself.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Zechariah 3:1–2 Then the angel showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, with Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan: “The LORD rebukes you, Satan! …”

1 Chronicles 21:1 Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

2 Samuel 24:1 Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He stirred up David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

Jude 9 But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, did not presume to bring a slanderous charge against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

Stated. The satan comes with the sons of God before the LORD and acts only within the limit the LORD sets: “you must not lay a hand on the man himself”. In Zechariah he stands “to accuse him”, the high priest. Chronicles retells the census of 2 Samuel with Satan, not the LORD, inciting David. Jude gives the rebuke “The Lord rebuke you!” to Michael, spoken against the devil.

Measured.

• śāṭān, ‘adversary’, occurs in 23 verses of the Hebrew Bible. In 13 it has the article, haśśāṭān, ‘the adversary’, a title: Job 1–2 (11 verses) and Zechariah 3:1–2. Zechariah’s “to accuse him” (lĕśiṭnô) is the verb of the same root.
• In the other ten verses the word has no article and names many adversaries. The LORD raises “an adversary, Hadad the Edomite” against Solomon (1 Kings 11:14); a psalm prays, “let an accuser stand at his right hand” (Psalm 109:6); and the angel of the LORD himself stands in Balaam’s road as a śāṭān, “to oppose him” (Numbers 22:22, 32). 1 Chronicles 21:1 is one of these ten: it can be read as a name or as ‘an adversary’.
• The Greek renders the satan of Job, Zechariah and 1 Chronicles 21:1 as διάβολος, Revelation’s word for “the devil”. It also uses the word of men: of Haman (Esther 7:4; 8:1), of the accuser of Psalm 109:6 (108:6 in the Greek), and of the citadel that was “an evil adversary to Israel” (1 Maccabees 1:36, KJV Apocrypha).
• Jude’s rebuke, Ἐπιτιμήσαι σοι κύριος, uses the optative ἐπιτιμήσαι, ‘may he rebuke’. In the whole Greek Bible that form occurs only there and in Zechariah 3:2, where the rebuke is spoken to the διάβολος.

Inference.

• That the New Testament gives its devil the office of the satan is strong. Revelation names him “the accuser of our brothers”, “he who accuses them day and night before our God”: the satan’s work in Job and Zechariah. Jude sets Zechariah’s rebuke, in its one Greek form, against the devil.
• That he is the same individual as the satan of Job is moderate. In Hebrew the word is a title that even the LORD’s own angel can bear (Numbers 22:22), and Job and Zechariah never call their satan a rebel.
• Later readers drew the line further: in the Talmud, Reish Lakish makes the satan of Job one with the evil inclination and the angel of death (Bava Batra 16a).

Psalm 82:1–2, 6–8 God presides in the divine assembly; He renders judgment among the gods: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah … I have said, ‘You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.’ But like mortals you will die, and like rulers you will fall.” Arise, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are Your inheritance.

Isaiah 24:21–22 In that day the LORD will punish the host of heaven above and the kings of the earth below. They will be gathered together like prisoners in a pit. They will be confined to a dungeon and punished after many days.

1 Corinthians 8:5–6 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many so-called gods and lords), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, …

Origen, Homilies on Exodus 8.2 (Heine, 1982, p. 319) It is evident, therefore, that the angels to whom the Most High entrusted the nations to be ruled are called either gods or lords; …

Whence also the Lord said to the angels who did not preserve their preeminence: “I said, ‘You are gods and are all sons of the Most High. But you shall die like men and shall fall like one of the princes,’ ” imitating, of course, the devil who became the leader of all to ruin. …

Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 124 (ANF) … and the fall of one of the princes, i.e., of him who was called the serpent, who fell with a great overthrow, because he deceived Eve.

Stated. God judges “among the gods” for injustice. Though “sons of the Most High”, they will die like mortals and fall “like rulers”, and God is summoned: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are Your inheritance”. Isaiah foresees the LORD punishing “the host of heaven above” together with “the kings of the earth below”. Paul speaks of gods “whether in heaven or on earth” and sets against them “one God, the Father” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ”; a few verses before, “there is no God but one” (8:4). Origen says these gods are “the angels to whom the Most High entrusted the nations to be ruled”, and he applies the psalm to “the angels who did not preserve their preeminence”. Justin reads the fallen prince as “him who was called the serpent”.

Measured.

• The grammar keeps the one apart from the many. In 82:1 the God who judges takes singular forms: niṣṣāb, ‘stands’ (the BSB’s “presides”), and yišpōṭ, “He renders judgment”. The assembly is baʿădat-ʾēl, ‘the assembly of El’, the BSB’s “the divine assembly”. ʿēdâ, ‘assembly’, stands in 140 verses, with ʾēl only here. 82:7’s kĕʾādām, “like mortals”, has the letters of Hosea 6:7 and Job 31:33, the only other verses with them, where the BSB reads “like Adam”. The gods are addressed in the plural: ʾattem, ‘you’ (v. 6); tāmûtûn and tippōlû, ‘you will die … you will fall’ (v. 7).
• Verse 8 is a summons: qûmâ and šopṭâ are imperatives, ‘arise’, ‘judge’. Its reason, kî-ʾattâ tinḥal bĕkol-haggôyim, has an imperfect, tinḥal, ‘you will inherit’ (or ‘you inherit’), rendered in the BSB “for all the nations are Your inheritance”; the Greek has a future, κατακληρονομήσεις.
• The psalm shares three words with Deuteronomy 32:8: ʿelyôn, ‘Most High’ (v. 6); the root nḥl, ‘inherit’ (v. 8); and gôyim, ‘nations’ (v. 8). All three stand in only six chapters of the Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy 26 and 32, Isaiah 14, and Psalms 47, 78 and 82.
• Its “rulers” (śārîm, v. 7) is Daniel’s title for the princes of the nations, and its phrase ʾaḥad haśśārîm, ‘one of the princes’, occurs elsewhere only of Michael (Daniel 10:13; step 8). Brenton’s English of the Greek reads “fall as one of the princes” (Psalm 81:7 in the Greek numbering), where the Greek word is ἀρχόντων, ‘rulers’.
• Psalm 82 has no YHWH. It stands in the part of the Psalter, Psalms 42–83, where ʾĕlōhîm outnumbers the name 245 to 40, against 48 to 278 in Psalms 1–41 and 69 to 369 in Psalms 84–150. Where one psalm appears twice, the copy in this part writes ʾĕlōhîm for the name: “The LORD looks down from heaven” (14:2) is “God looks down from heaven” (53:2). The next psalm, also headed lĕʾāsāp, ‘of Asaph’, ends: “You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth” (83:18).
• Isaiah 24:21’s phrase is ṣĕbāʾ hammārôm bammārôm, ‘the host of the height on high’, not Deuteronomy 4:19’s kol ṣĕbāʾ haššāmayim, and it stands beside malkê hāʾădāmâ, ‘the kings of the earth’: powers above and kings below, punished together.
• In Psalm 96:5 the gods of the peoples are ʾĕlîlîm, ‘idols’ or ‘worthless things’: “all the gods of the nations are idols”. The Greek (95:5) renders them δαιμόνια, ‘demons’, as Greek Deuteronomy 32:17 does.
• In 1 Corinthians 8:5 the Greek has “so-called” (λεγόμενοι) in the first clause only. The parenthesis reads ὥσπερ εἰσὶν θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοί, ‘as there are many gods and many lords’, where the BSB repeats the word.

Joint 2 · The gods of Psalm 82 are the sons of God of 32:8. A reading; the chain does not need it (The sequence as a conditional proof).

• For. The psalm’s own title for them, “sons of the Most High”, a heavenly title in Psalm 89’s cognate, bĕnê ʾēlîm, though Hosea gives Israel bĕnê ʾēl-ḥāy (step 2); the three shared words and the shared title of the princes; Origen; and 11QMelchizedek (step 13), which applies the psalm to “Belial and the spirits of his lot”. The one God judging the many in the grammar fits a human court as well, so it does not tell the readings apart.
• Against. Jesus applies “I have said you are gods” to those “to whom the word of God came” (John 10:34–35). That is no naming in the Scope’s sense, which counts a later book’s identification of a figure, as Acts 13:33 names the Son of Psalm 2: John describes the hearers, and the description has the Greek Old Testament’s words for the word of the LORD coming to a prophet, ἐγένετο λόγος κυρίου πρός (Jonah 1:1; Micah 1:1; 83 verses), which lean to human hearers, while in the psalm the word “I have said” comes to the gods themselves (82:6). The Targum of Psalms reads 82:1 of the congregation of the righteous and of true judges, and renders 82:6 ‘you are reckoned like angels’: people likened to angels, not angels. The Talmud reads 82:6–7 of Israel at Sinai, who would not have died had they not sinned (Avodah Zarah 5a). Justin, though he names the serpent as the fallen prince, also draws from the psalm that “all men are deemed worthy of becoming” gods. And elsewhere the Torah uses hāʾĕlōhîm where the BSB has “before the judges” (Exodus 21:6; 22:8–9). The psalm’s own words lean this way at two points: ʿēdâ is elsewhere an assembly of people, chiefly Israel’s congregation (ʿădat YHWH, Numbers 27:17), or of Korah’s followers, or a swarm of bees (Judges 14:8); and kĕʾādām is the “like Adam” of Hosea 6:7, the ground of the Talmud’s Sinai reading (Measured, above).
• Against a second god above the LORD. Smith reads the psalm as it stands: “Psalm 82 also presents the god El presiding in a divine assembly at which Yahweh stands up and makes his accusation against the other gods”, and “Here the text shows the older religious worldview which the passage is denouncing” (Smith 2001). His reading rests on two features of the final text, niṣṣāb, ‘stands’, and ʿădat-ʾēl, ‘the assembly of El’ (Measured, above). He and this study agree that the God who stands and judges is the LORD: the judge is ʾĕlōhîm with singular verbs, and in this part of the Psalter ʾĕlōhîm stands where the name would stand. They part on the assembly’s ʾēl. Read alone, the psalm lets that ʾēl be a god presiding over the LORD: a reading. Read in the edited Psalter, the gods are “sons of the Most High” (82:6), and the companion psalm of Asaph names the LORD himself the Most High: “You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth” (83:18). So the assembly is his, and no god presides over him: strong, by R1 and R2.
• If Joint 2 failed, the gods would be human judges, and the one Old Testament text whose own words tie the condemned gods to the allotment would drop out. The psalm would still end with God inheriting “all the nations”, and heavenly powers would still be punished (Isaiah 24:21; step 17).

Where readers differ. Readers differ on how far Paul grants the gods’ existence. In 1 Corinthians 10:20 he says pagan sacrifices are offered “to demons, not to God”, and 8:4 that “an idol is nothing at all in the world”: the idol is nothing, the demon behind it is not (Demons and possession).

Before the psalm: the Exodus.

Exodus 12:12 On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn male, both man and beast, and I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.

• Stated. At the Passover the LORD will “execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt”. Numbers looks back: “the LORD had executed judgment against their gods” (33:4). The song at the sea asks, “Who among the gods is like You, O LORD?” (Exodus 15:11)
• Measured. Exodus 12:12’s “judgment” is šĕfāṭîm, a noun of the root špṭ, the root of Psalm 82:1’s yišpōṭ. The noun occurs in 16 verses; only in Exodus 12:12 and Numbers 33:4 does it fall on gods, and elsewhere on people: on Egypt in Exodus’s “mighty acts of judgment” (6:6; 7:4), on cities and nations in Ezekiel, on mockers in Proverbs 19:29. The constructions differ: Exodus judges the gods of Egypt, ûbĕkol-ʾĕlōhê miṣrayim; the psalm judges in their midst, bĕqereb ʾĕlōhîm.
• Inference. The Exodus judges the gods of one nation; Psalm 82 judges the gods of the assembly and gives God all the nations (82:8). Deuteronomy ties the Exodus to the allotment: the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt “to be the people of His inheritance” (4:20; step 8). That the two judgments belong to one story rests on a common root and a shared object, not on a citation. A reading.

Psalm 2:7–9 I will proclaim the decree spoken to Me by the LORD: “You are My Son; today I have become Your Father. Ask Me, and I will make the nations Your inheritance, the ends of the earth Your possession. You will break them with an iron scepter; You will shatter them like pottery.”

Daniel 7:13–14 … I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Hebrews 1:5–6 For to which of the angels did God ever say: “You are My Son; today I have become Your Father”? Or again: “I will be His Father, and He will be My Son”? And again, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all God’s angels worship Him.”

Acts 13:32–33 And now we proclaim to you the good news: What God promised our fathers He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: ‘You are My Son; today I have become Your Father.’

Stated. God says to his Son, “I will make the nations Your inheritance”, and Daniel’s “One like the Son of Man” receives a kingdom “that the people of every nation and language should serve Him”. Hebrews applies Psalm 2:7 to Jesus and sets him above the angels: “Let all God’s angels worship Him.” Acts applies the same verse to Jesus by name: God kept his promise “by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm”.

The psalm’s own king. The psalm sets its Son on Zion: “I have installed My King on Zion, upon My holy mountain.” The kings of the earth stand “against the LORD and against His Anointed One” (2:2). Acts gives the psalm to David, “You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Your servant, our father David” (4:25), and reads its kings and rulers as those who conspired against Jesus (4:26–27). Rashi reads it of David himself, “according to its literal sense” and “as a rebuttal of” the Christian reading: an early manuscript gives the messianic reading to “Many of the students of Jesus”, where the printed text, after the censor, has “Our rabbis” (Cohen, TheTorah.com, 2024). On 2:7 he glosses “You are My son” as “The head over Israel, who are called ‘My firstborn son.’” (tr. Rosenberg). The Talmud gives Psalm 2:7–8 to the Messiah son of David (Sukkah 52a). The decree has a model in the promise to David’s son, which Hebrews sets beside it, “I will be His Father, and He will be My Son” (Hebrews 1:5), and whose next words are “When he does wrong, I will discipline him with the rod of men” (2 Samuel 7:14): in its first setting the son is a king who can do wrong.

Daniel’s own figure. Within Daniel the “One like the Son of Man” is not named. Daniel asks “the true meaning of all this”, and the interpretation names the beasts “four kings” but not the figure, and gives the kingdom to the saints: “But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and possess it forever” (7:16–18; again 7:22, 27). In Aramaic the figure’s gift and the saints’ share their words: yĕhîb, ‘was given’, šolṭān, ‘dominion’, malkû, ‘kingdom’, ʿālam, ‘everlasting’, and lēh yiplĕḥûn, ‘shall serve him’, which stands only at 7:14 and 7:27 (plḥ, ‘serve’, in 10 verses). Readers divide. He is a heavenly individual, for Collins “a heavenly individual, probably the archangel Michael, rather than as a collective symbol” (Collins 2010, 195). He stands for the people, as the angel’s explanation gives the kingdom to “the people, the saints of the Most High” (7:27), in the words of 7:14. Or he is the Messiah, as the New Testament has it, and the Talmud too gives 7:9’s thrones to God and to “David, i.e., the messiah”, though Rabbi Yosei rebukes the reading: “Until when will you desacralize the Divine Presence by equating God with a person?” (Sanhedrin 38b). In the New Testament Jesus, asked whether he is the Christ, answers with Daniel’s words, “you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62), and Revelation’s “One like the Son of Man” is the one who says, “I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever!” (1:13, 18). The last two can meet, the Messiah as the head who receives the kingdom his people share, and that reply is itself a reading. Within this scope the New Testament’s naming counts as stated; on Daniel’s words alone, who the figure is is a reading. Historians also find the scene’s shape in older myth: “the ultimate source of this imagery can be found in the Canaanite myths of the second millennium”, with “the triumph of Baal, the rider of the clouds” (Collins 2010, 193): a high god and a second figure who receives dominion, the shape of Gap 3’s question. Nothing in the chain rests on Daniel alone: the nations are promised to the Son in Psalm 2, which Acts 13:33 names, and if Daniel’s figure were Michael, Joint 4, which concerns the LORD and the sons of 32:8, would stand as it is.

Measured.

• Psalm 2:8’s “nations” (gôyim) and “inheritance” (naḥălâ) are the words of Deuteronomy 32:8–9 and Psalm 82:8: the same noun for the nations, the same root for the inheritance.
• In 2:6 the Hebrew has God speak, nāsaktî malkî, ‘I have installed my king’; the Greek has the king speak, κατεστάθην βασιλεὺς ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ, ‘I was installed king by him’.
• Hebrews 1:5 quotes Greek Psalm 2:7 word for word. Hebrews 1:6 is word for word the line of Deuteronomy 32:43 in Brenton’s Greek: προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι Θεοῦ. Editions differ here: Rahlfs’s text reads υἱοὶ θεοῦ, ‘sons of God’, in that line and puts ἄγγελοι θεοῦ in the next, and the copy of the Song among the Odes reads πάντες οἱ ἄγγελοι θεοῦ, with the article. The words προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες occur only in Deuteronomy 32:43, its copy in the Odes, and Hebrews 1:6.
• The Masoretic Hebrew of 32:43 lacks that line, as the ESV notes: “Masoretic Text lacks bow down to him, all gods”; the Qumran copy 4QDeutq has it (DJD XIV), in the words the Masoretic Text keeps at Psalm 97:7 (step 8).

The law through angels.

• Stated. Stephen tells his accusers that they “received the law ordained by angels” (Acts 7:53), and Paul says that the law “was administered through angels by a mediator” (Galatians 3:19). Greek Deuteronomy 33:2 sets angels beside the LORD at Sinai: “On his right hand were his angels with him” (Brenton). Hebrews argues from the lesser to the greater: “if the message spoken by angels was binding” (2:2), there is no escape for those who neglect the salvation “first announced by the Lord” (2:3; step 17).
• Measured. Acts 7:53 has εἰς διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων and Galatians 3:19 διαταγεὶς δι’ ἀγγέλων: one root, with angels in each. Hebrews 2:2 shares δι’ ἀγγέλων, ‘through angels’, with Galatians.

11QMelchizedek (11Q13), column II (Vermès, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, revised edition, 2004, pp. 532–4) … [And h]e will, by his strength, judge the holy ones of God, executing judgement as it is written concerning him in the Songs of David, who said, ELOHIM has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement (Psalms lxxxii, 1). … As for that which he s[aid, How long will you] judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah (Psalms lxxxii, 2), its interpretation concerns Belial and the spirits of his lot [who] rebelled by turning away from the precepts of God to ... And Melchizedek will avenge the vengeance of the judgements of God... and he will drag [them from the hand of] Belial and from the hand of all the sp[irits of] his [lot].

Square brackets mark restored text; the gaps printed as three dots are in the source.

John 5:22 Furthermore, the Father judges no one, but has assigned all judgment to the Son,

John 5:27 And He has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.

Stated. A Qumran scroll reads the “ELOHIM” who judges in Psalm 82:1 as Melchizedek. It reads the unjust judging of Psalm 82:2 as concerning “Belial and the spirits of his lot”, and says that “Melchizedek will avenge the vengeance of the judgements of God” and “will drag [them from the hand of] Belial”. Rainbow dates the work: “enough can be read or guessed to assign the original composition of the work to around 120 bce, tentatively on literary grounds” (Rainbow 1997, 179–80). John’s Gospel says that the Father “has assigned all judgment to the Son” and has given him authority to judge “because He is the Son of Man”.

Measured.

• John 5:27’s “the Son of Man” is υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, with no article on either noun. Of the 78 verses in the Gospels and Acts that speak of the Son of Man, it is the only one without the articles, as Daniel 7:13’s kĕbar ʾĕnāš, ‘like a son of man’, has none (step 12). But it stands as a predicate before its verb, ἐστίν, where “Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article” (E. C. Colwell, Journal of Biblical Literature 52, 1933, as quoted by Kuehne, 1975), so the form proves nothing of its own.
• The clause’s other words are Old Greek Daniel’s. John has ἐξουσίαν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ κρίσιν ποιεῖν, ‘he gave him authority to execute judgment’; Daniel’s figure is given authority, ἐδόθη αὐτῷ ἐξουσία (7:14), and the Ancient of Days gives the judgment to the saints, τὴν κρίσιν ἔδωκε (7:22). ‘Authority’ with ‘give’ is common (29 New Testament verses), but ἐξουσία and κρίσις, ‘authority’ and ‘judgment’, stand together in no other New Testament verse, and in the Greek Old Testament only in Esther 8:12 and in Old Greek Daniel 7:26, where the court sits and the beast’s authority is taken away. The next verses raise the dead to two ends, “the resurrection of life” and “the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29), the one New Testament verse with ‘resurrection’, ‘life’ and ‘judgment’ together, as Daniel 12:2 raises “some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt”.

Inference. No New Testament text cites the scroll. That the Son fills the role it expected is a Christian reading of two separate witnesses: both give the carrying out of God’s judgment to a heavenly figure who acts for him. A reading. That John’s judge is Daniel’s “One like the Son of Man” rests, besides the title, on two supports, independent of it and of each other: authority joined to judgment, in Old Greek Daniel’s words, a pair that stands together in no other New Testament verse and in the Greek Old Testament only in Esther 8:12 and Daniel 7:26; and the two resurrections of Daniel 12:2. Read without the title, as ‘because he is a son of man’, a man, the clause gives the reason a man judges (Acts 17:31), and Daniel’s figure is himself ‘like a son of man’: the two readings meet. Strong. Hebrews likens Melchizedek to the Son, “like the Son of God” (7:3), but its Melchizedek is the priest-king of Genesis 14, and it does not cite the scroll.

Luke 4:5–8 Then the devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. “I will give You authority over all these kingdoms and all their glory,” he said. “For it has been relinquished to me, and I can give it to anyone I wish. So if You worship me, it will all be Yours.” But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”

1 John 5:19 We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one.

Matthew 16:13, 18 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He questioned His disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” … And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Stated. The devil shows Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” and claims their authority: “it has been relinquished to me, and I can give it to anyone I wish”. Jesus refuses to worship him. Elsewhere the New Testament concedes the devil’s hold: “the whole world is under the power of the evil one”. In “the region of Caesarea Philippi” Jesus says of his church that “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it”.

Measured. Behind “has been relinquished” stands παραδέδοται, ‘has been handed over’. Luke does not say by whom.

Background. Nothing in the chain rests on the rest of this step: it records where the saying was spoken, and a link that readers have drawn.

The place. Josephus: “When Philip also had built Paneas, a city at the fountains of Jordan, he named it Cesarea.” (Antiquities 18.28, tr. Whiston). Easton’s Bible Dictionary places Caesarea Philippi at the upper source of the Jordan, “near the base of Mount Hermon”. 1 Enoch sets the Watchers’ descent “on the summit of Mount Hermon” (step 5), and Enoch reads their petition “at the waters of Dan”, “to the south of the west of Hermon”:

1 Enoch 13:7 (Charles, 1913) And I went off and sat down at the waters of Dan, in the land of Dan, to the south of the west of Hermon: I read their petition till I fell asleep.

Inference. That Jesus spoke there with Hermon’s Watchers in view is inference, and an old comparison: Nickelsburg’s “Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee” (Journal of Biblical Literature 100, 1981) takes up Enoch and Peter together. The places lie close together, but no ancient text links the saying to them, and “gates of Hades” is a stock phrase for death. In the Greek Old Testament it occurs at Isaiah 38:10, “the gates of Sheol” (πύλαις ᾅδου); Wisdom 16:13, “thou leadest to the gates of hell” (KJV Apocrypha); 3 Maccabees 5:51; the Psalms of Solomon 16:2; and the copy of Isaiah’s psalm among the Odes. In the New Testament it occurs only at Matthew 16:18. Weak, and nothing rests on it.

Revelation 12:5, 7–10 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was caught up to God and to His throne. … Then a war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But the dragon was not strong enough, and no longer was any place found in heaven for him and his angels. … And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down— he who accuses them day and night before our God.

John 12:31 Now judgment is upon this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out.

Matthew 28:18–19 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, …

Ephesians 1:20–21 … He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named, …

Colossians 2:13, 15 … God made you alive with Christ. … And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

1 Peter 3:19–20, 22 … He also went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. … who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him.

Galatians 4:8–9 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and worthless principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

Origen, Homilies on Genesis 9.3 (Heine, 1982, p. 154) Whence also those angels have been roused to wrath who held each individual nation under their authority. “For when the Most High divided the nations according to the number of the angels of God, then Jacob became his portion and Israel the lot of his inheritance.” For Christ, to whom the Father had said: “Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the utmost parts of the earth for your possession,” expelling those very angels from the authority and domination which they had among the nations, provoked them to wrath. … Hence also the Apostle of Christ: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and rulers of this world.”

Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel 4.10 (Ferrar, 1920) And thus He no longer claimed as under His own authority just and clear-sighted Israel, nor His own proper portion only, but all the nations on the earth, which before were allotted to many angels, …

Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Stated.

• Revelation’s child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter”, is “caught up to God and to His throne”. The dragon then loses his place in heaven, and the heavenly voice ties his fall to the coming of “the authority of His Christ”.
• Jesus says, “now the prince of this world will be cast out”. Risen, he says that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me”, and sends his disciples to “all nations”.
• God seats him “far above all rule and authority”, and he is “the head over every ruler and authority” (Colossians 2:10). In Colossians, God disarms “the powers and authorities”, “triumphing over them by the cross”; in Ephesians, the struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities” goes on.
• 1 Peter sets the risen Christ “at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him”, and says that he “preached to the spirits in prison” who “disobeyed long ago” “in the days of Noah”.
• Paul tells Gentile converts that they “were slaves to those who by nature are not gods” and are now “known by God”.
• Origen and Eusebius state the reclaiming of the nations allotted in Deuteronomy 32:8. Origen sets 32:8 beside Psalm 2:8 and has Christ “expelling those very angels from the authority and domination which they had among the nations”; Eusebius has him claim “all the nations on the earth, which before were allotted to many angels”.

Measured.

• Revelation 12:5 takes the words of Psalm 2:9, ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ, ‘with a rod of iron’. In the Greek Old Testament the phrase occurs only in Psalm 2:9 and the Psalms of Solomon 17:24; in the New Testament only in Revelation (2:27; 12:5; 19:15). Revelation’s verb is ποιμαίνω, ‘shepherd’, rendered “rule”: the verb of Greek Psalm 2:9 (ποιμανεῖς), where the Hebrew vowels read tĕrōʿēm, “You will break them”. Revelation follows the Greek.
• Matthew 28:18’s “has been given” is a passive, Ἐδόθη: the authority is given to him, as in Luke 4:6 the devil’s is “relinquished” (παραδέδοται).
• John’s “prince” is ἄρχων, the word behind the Greek psalm’s falling “princes” (Psalm 81:7 in the Greek numbering; step 11). ἄρχων is common (36 New Testament verses); ‘the ruler of this world’ is John’s phrase alone (12:31; 16:11; 14:30 in another order).
• The “powers and authorities” of Colossians 2:15 are ἀρχαί and ἐξουσίαι. The pair stands together in ten New Testament verses: of human authorities in three (Luke 12:11; 20:20; Titus 3:1), and in seven of the powers created in Christ (Colossians 1:16), sat above (Ephesians 1:21), headed (Colossians 2:10), disarmed (2:15), still fought (Ephesians 6:12), shown God’s wisdom “in the heavenly realms” (3:10), and destroyed at the end (1 Corinthians 15:24; step 17). The pair alone does not make a power heavenly; the passage does.
• Colossians 2:15 ends θριαμβεύσας αὐτοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ: ‘in it’, the cross of 2:14, as the BSB reads “by the cross”, or ‘in him’, Christ.
• 1 Peter 3:22’s “subject” (ὑποταγέντων) is a common verb (31 New Testament verses), the verb of Hebrews 2:8, “and placed everything under his feet.” (Psalm 8:6).
• 2 Peter 2:5 calls Noah “a preacher of righteousness” (κήρυκα), the noun of 1 Peter 3:19’s verb “preached” (ἐκήρυξεν).
• Galatians 4:3’s “we” (ἡμεῖς) includes Paul, a Jew, among those once “enslaved under the basic principles of the world”, and 4:10 ties the principles to the calendar: “You are observing special days and months and seasons and years!” The BSB itself renders the same Greek, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, “the basic principles of the world” in Galatians 4:3 and “the spiritual forces of the world” in Colossians 2:8 and 2:20. στοιχεῖον occurs seven times in the New Testament: of elementary teaching in Hebrews 5:12, “the basic principles of God’s word”, and of the physical elements in 2 Peter 3:10, 12.

Inference.

• Revelation’s child is the Son of Psalm 2: Revelation gives him the psalm’s rare words and the throne, and in 19:13–15 the one who “will rule them with an iron scepter” is named: “His name is The Word of God”. Strong.
• Within Matthew, 28:18 answers 4:8–9. The devil takes Jesus “to a very high mountain” and offers “all the kingdoms of the world” for worship; the risen Jesus, on “the mountain Jesus had designated”, says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me”. Moderate: the scenes match, but Matthew does not join them in words. Luke’s ἐξουσία, ‘authority’, in the devil’s offer (4:6) is a second echo, from another Gospel.
• That the “spirits in prison” are the angels who sinned before the Flood rests on the date, “the days of Noah”, where 2 Peter 2:4–5 sets the angels who sinned (step 5). Augustine read the verse of the men of that day, to whom Christ preached through Noah: “But to the men of Noah's time the gospel was preached in vain, because they believed not when God's long suffering waited for them during the many years in which the ark was being built” (Letter 164.16), and 2 Peter calls Noah a preacher. A reading.
• That Galatians’ “those who by nature are not gods” are the powers over the nations is a reading of sense, not of shared words; it matches the Song’s “demons, not to God” (32:17). Whether the στοιχεῖα are spiritual powers or elementary rules, readers and translations divide, the BSB within itself. A reading.

Joint 3 · The New Testament and Deuteronomy 32:8. That these rulers and nations are those of 32:8 has two parts. That Paul and Hebrews knew the verse with heavenly beings in it is strong (Gap 1). That they wrote of the rulers with that verse in view is moderate: no phrase of 32:8 recurs in the New Testament (Gap 1), and Origen and Eusebius, who state the link, are early readers (R1). Joint 3 is moderate. The chain does not need it: the Son sits “far above all rule and authority”, and “All authority in heaven and on earth” is his, so if the nations were placed under heavenly powers (Joint 1), those powers are beneath him whether or not a writer had 32:8 in view. Check 1c sets out that step from those texts and Joint 1c, and shows that “disarmed” does not follow without Joint 3 (The sequence as a conditional proof).

Where readers differ. Eusebius treats the angels over the nations as guardians who were “unable to defend in any way the subject nations”, set apart from “the malicious daemons” Christ put to flight. Psalm 82, Daniel 10 and the homilies of Origen quoted here treat the nations’ rulers as unjust or hostile, and Jubilees says the spirits were placed over the nations “to lead them astray from Him”. Origen is not uniform, though: on the Luke passage in step 8, Lienhard notes, “Cf. Homilies on Numbers 11.4; and Hom. 12.3, where the rulers are good angels”.

Verdict. On Joint 1, the powers over the nations are under the Son and at the end destroyed: that follows from “all rule and authority” (Ephesians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 15:24), and it is as strong as Joint 1, moderate. Each of the rest needs a link of its own. That they oppose God rests on Persia’s prince, who withstands God’s messenger (Daniel 10:13), carried to every nation by Joint 1c: moderate. That they are disarmed needs Joint 3, for Colossians 2:15 has no ‘all’: moderate. That they are judged rests on Isaiah 24:21, if its host on high takes in the paired powers, moderate, or on the gods of Psalm 82, condemned for injustice, on Joint 2, a reading. That they failed by fault, and not, as Eusebius has it, by weakness: moderate, on Daniel 10:13 with Colossians 2:15, which needs Joint 3; on Psalm 82, a reading. Origen’s good angels and Eusebius’s guardians are early readers (R1).

The seventy-two, and the rulers of this age.

• Stated. Jesus sends out “seventy-two others” (Luke 10:1). They return saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name” (10:17; Demons and possession), and he answers, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (10:18) Paul writes, “None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8) Ephesians gives God’s purpose: that through the church his wisdom be “made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (3:10).
• Measured. The SBL Greek of Luke 10:1 and 10:17 reads ἑβδομήκοντα δύο, ‘seventy-two’, and marks δύο as a variant; the KJV follows the other reading, “other seventy”. Under the count in Gap 2, the Hebrew list of Genesis 10 has seventy entries; the Greek adds Elisa (10:2) and Cainan twice (10:22, 24), which gives seventy-three in Brenton’s text and seventy-two in Rahlfs’s, which lacks Obal (10:28). Numbers gives the number another source: “seventy of the elders of Israel” (11:16), and two more, “one named Eldad and the other Medad”, on whom the Spirit also rested (11:26). The “rulers” of 1 Corinthians 2:8 are ἄρχοντες, and “the rulers of this age” is Paul’s phrase alone (2:6, 8).
• Where readers differ. That Luke’s seventy-two answer the peoples of Genesis 10 is a reading; Luke does not say so, and Moses’ seventy and two answer the number as well. Whether Paul’s “rulers of this age” are human authorities or spiritual powers, readers divide; Ephesians places its rulers “in the heavenly realms”. A reading.

Acts 2:3–6, 9–11 They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. And when this sound rang out, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking his own language. … Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 17.17 (Gifford, NPNF) The multitude of the hearers was confounded — it was a second confusion, in the room of that first evil one at Babylon. For in that confusion of tongues there was division of purpose, because their thought was at enmity with God; but here minds were restored and united, because the object of interest was godly. The means of falling were the means of recovery.

Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 55, 10 (Tweed, NPNF) Recollect that tower of proud men made after the deluge: what said the proud men? Lest we perish in a deluge, let us make a lofty tower. … In pride they were thinking themselves to be fortified, they built up a lofty tower, and the Lord divided the tongues of them. … Through proud men, divided were the tongues; through humble Apostles, united were the tongues. Spirit of pride dispersed tongues, Spirit Holy united tongues.

Stated. The tongues of fire “separated and came to rest on each of them”, a crowd gathered “in bewilderment”, and Jews “from every nation under heaven” heard “the wonders of God in our own tongues”. Acts never names Babel. Cyril of Jerusalem and Augustine make the link: Pentecost was “a second confusion, in the room of that first evil one at Babylon”, and “through humble Apostles, united were the tongues”.

Measured.

• Acts 2:6’s “bewilderment” (συνεχύθη) is Babel’s verb: συγχέωμεν, ‘let us confuse’ (Genesis 11:7), and Σύγχυσις, the city’s Greek name, which Brenton renders “its name was called Confusion” (11:9). In the New Testament the verb occurs only in Acts (2:6; 9:22; 19:32; 21:27, 31), each time of a crowd or people in uproar; in the Greek Old Testament it takes a language as its object only at Babel. Wisdom 10:5 uses it of the nations there, ἐθνῶν συγχυθέντων: “the nations in their wicked conspiracy being confounded” (KJV Apocrypha). Acts 2:5–6 sets the same two words side by side: “every nation under heaven” (ἔθνους), and the crowd confounded (συνεχύθη).
• Acts 2:3’s “separated” (διαμεριζόμεναι) is the verb Greek Deuteronomy 32:8 uses for the Most High dividing the nations, and Greek Genesis 10:25 for the earth “divided” in Peleg’s days. The verb is common (19 Septuagint verses, 11 in the New Testament, among them Acts 2:45, where believers divide their goods), so the link is an echo at most.

Where readers differ.

• Babel undone. Cyril and Augustine, above.
• Sinai renewed. Pentecost is the Feast of Weeks, counted fifty days: “You shall count off fifty days” (Leviticus 23:16), and Israel came to Sinai “In the third month” (Exodus 19:1). Jubilees makes the feast the day “to renew the covenant every year” (6:17). Philo says the voice at Sinai came “in a language familiar to the hearers” (On the Decalogue 46, tr. Yonge), and in the Talmud R. Yoḥanan says that each word spoken at Sinai divided into seventy languages (Shabbat 88b).
• Neither in Luke’s mind. “Despite the theological attractiveness of seeing Pentecost as the reversal of Babel, there is little from the ancient historical and religious context to suggest that Luke or his audience would have made such a connection” (Mikeal C. Parsons, Working Preacher, 2014).
• A reading. The shared verbs stand on any view. Cyril and Augustine show that the Babel reading is old, not that it is Luke’s; the Sinai reading has its own ancient witnesses.

Hebrews 2:5–8 For it is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But somewhere it is testified in these words: “What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor and placed everything under his feet.” …

Daniel 7:27 Then the sovereignty, dominion, and greatness of the kingdoms under all of heaven will be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will serve and obey Him.

1 Corinthians 6:2–3 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? … Do you not know that we will judge angels? …

Revelation 2:26–27 And to the one who overcomes and continues in My work until the end, I will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter and shatter them like pottery —just as I have received authority from My Father.

Revelation 3:21 To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

Revelation 20:2–3 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. …

Revelation 20:7–8, 10 When the thousand years are complete, Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle. … And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, into which the beast and the false prophet had already been thrown. …

1 Corinthians 15:24–25 Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.

Romans 16:20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. …

Revelation 11:15 … “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.”

Stated.

• The world to come is not subject to angels: “it is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come”.
• The kingdoms “under all of heaven” go to “the saints of the Most High”, and believers “will judge angels”. Those who overcome receive “authority over the nations” and a seat on the Son’s throne.
• The dragon is bound “so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete”, released “to deceive the nations”, and finally “thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur”.
• At the end Christ “hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power”.

Measured.

• Revelation 2:27’s “iron scepter” is Psalm 2:9 again (ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ), now given to those who overcome.
• Revelation 20:3 and 20:8 name the nations (τὰ ἔθνη) as what the dragon deceives, to the last.
• The “dominion, authority” of 1 Corinthians 15:24 are ἀρχή and ἐξουσία, the pair of Colossians 1:16 and 2:15 (step 15).
• In Hebrews the word for the “world” of 2:5, οἰκουμένη, occurs only twice: there, and in 1:6, the world into which God brings his firstborn while “all God’s angels” worship him.

Inference.

• Hebrews 2:5’s “not to angels” implies that the present world was in some sense subject to angels, in line with Deuteronomy 32:8 but unstated. Its “about which we are speaking” points back to 1:6, and Hebrews 2:2’s “message spoken by angels” gives another ground for the contrast. Moderate.
• Romans 16:20 echoes Genesis 3:15 in sense, not in Greek: Romans has συντρίψει, ‘will crush’, while Brenton’s Greek of Genesis 3:15 has τηρήσει, rendered “he shall watch against thy head”. Reading Romans as Eden’s promise is inference, and Paul still speaks of the future: “will soon crush”. Moderate.

Sons of God by the Spirit.

• Stated. Paul gives the title to believers: “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14), and creation waits “for the revelation of the sons of God” (8:19). In Galatians, just before the “not gods” of step 15, he writes, “since you are a son, you are also an heir through God” (4:7).
• Measured. In the New Testament the plural “sons of God” names people only, in six verses (Matthew 5:9; Luke 20:36; Romans 8:14, 19; 9:26; Galatians 3:26), and “children of God” in ten more. Luke 20:36 gives the reason: the raised “are like the angels”, “they are sons of God”. Romans 8:19 has τῶν υἱῶν τοῦ θεοῦ; papyrus 848 reads υἱῶν θεοῦ at Deuteronomy 32:8 (step 8).
• A reading. That the council’s title passes to those led by the Spirit is a reading. Paul does not cite Deuteronomy 32:8, and he has a human source for the title: he quotes Hosea, “they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” (Romans 9:26).

The nations healed.

• Stated. “By its light the nations will walk” (Revelation 21:24); the city receives “the glory and honor of the nations” (21:26); and “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2).
• Measured. Revelation 21:24 has τὰ ἔθνη, and 21:26 and 22:2 τῶν ἐθνῶν: the word for the nations that the dragon deceives to the last (20:3, 8), and the word of Greek Deuteronomy 32:8.
• Inference. That the healing ends the story of the nations scattered at Babel and allotted in Deuteronomy 32:8 rests on the shared subject, not on a shared phrase. Moderate.

The nations at peace.

• Stated. Isaiah sees war between nations end: “Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war” (2:4). He names two great powers beside Israel: “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance” (19:25; Israel). Revelation keeps the nations distinct, “a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue” (7:9), and at the end “They will see His face” (22:4). Colossians gives the means: God was pleased “to reconcile to Himself all things”, “by making peace through the blood of His cross” (1:20).
• Measured. ʿam, ‘people’, and naḥălâ, ‘inheritance’, stand together in 32 verses. In the seventeen others where both name the LORD’s own, the people is Israel: Deuteronomy 4:20; 9:26, 29; 32:9; 1 Kings 8:51, 53; Psalms 28:9; 33:12; 78:62, 71; 94:5, 14; 106:40; Isaiah 47:6; Joel 2:17; 3:2; Micah 7:14. Isaiah 19:25 alone gives the first word to another nation: ʿammî miṣrayim, “Egypt My people”.
• Measured, the Greek. The Greek reads the verse otherwise: εὐλογημένος ὁ λαός μου ὁ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, “Blessed be my people that is in Egypt, and that is among the Assyrians, and Israel mine inheritance” (Brenton). There the title stays with Israel, in Egypt and in Assyria.
• Inference. In Deuteronomy 32:9 the LORD’s people is Israel; in the Hebrew of Isaiah 19:25 Egypt is his people too, and the pair has no other exception. The Greek translators, early readers (R1), gave the words to Israel’s people abroad. Whether Isaiah meant the exception is a reading. That the Hebrew turns the allotment of step 8 around is inference from the subject. Moderate.
• Every person? God “wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), yet of the city Revelation says, “nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who practices an abomination or a lie” (21:27). Hell under the four attributes, below, sets out the principal texts on the end of all.

The end of the story is stated outright; its beginning rests on one joint, and its place after Babel on step 7’s link. Four joints are marked. The dependency table under The sequence as a conditional proof sets out which links each conclusion needs, as the conclusions are there defined, and check 1a sets out Joint 4’s routes as deductions.

• Stated, needing no joint. The LORD alone is God, and nothing is beyond his presence, power, knowledge or goodness (step 1). The host of heaven is his creation (step 2). Sacrifices to the gods of the nations are offered to demons (Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20; Demons and possession), and the world lies under the evil one (1 John 5:19). The nations are promised to the Son (step 12), who is enthroned over every rule and authority, while the powers are disarmed and the accuser falls (step 15). His rule is shared with those who overcome, and every dominion is destroyed at the end (step 17).
• Needing Joint 1. That the nations were paired with heavenly powers (strong), and ruled by them (moderate) (step 8); and with it, that those powers are under the Son and at the end destroyed (step 15). That they are disarmed needs Joint 3 besides; that they are judged needs Isaiah 24:21’s host taken to include them, or Joint 2.
• Needing Joint 4. That the LORD who keeps Israel is not one of the paired powers (step 8; Gap 3). Two of its four routes rest on step 2’s identity of the company (strong); the others rest on Psalm 83:18 and on the Song’s own 32:39.
• Needing step 7’s link (moderate). That the pairing comes after Babel in the story’s order: Deuteronomy 32:8 does not say when the Most High divided the nations, and step 7 joins it to Genesis 10–11. On route B alone the pairing would have no place in the story without a further link, which is weak (step 8).
• Taken together. The beginning as told, paired, ruled and after Babel, needs Joint 1 and step 7’s link, and two of its links stand at moderate: a reading (How to read the marks).

The fact. Not one three-word sequence of the verse’s Greek (14 sequences in Brenton’s text) recurs in the SBL Greek New Testament, and none of the Göttingen ending, κατὰ ἀριθμὸν υἱῶν θεοῦ. The test finds the Song where the New Testament does quote it, which shows it works: 32:43 in Hebrews 1:6 and Romans 15:10, 32:21 in Romans 10:19, 32:17 in 1 Corinthians 10:20. It also catches chance meetings of common words (32:43 with Hebrews 9:19 and Revelation 19:2; 32:17 with Luke 6:23, 26), which a reader can set aside by eye. The absence is permanent.

What the New Testament does quote. It quotes the Song of Moses, in Greek:

• Hebrews 1:6, “Let all God’s angels worship Him”, is 32:43 word for word as in Brenton’s Greek, a line the Masoretic Hebrew lacks (step 12).
• Romans 15:10, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people”, is 32:43 (εὐφράνθητε, ἔθνη, μετὰ τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ).
• Romans 10:19, “I will make you jealous by those who are not a nation”, is 32:21.
• 1 Corinthians 10:20, “the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God”, takes the words of Greek 32:17: δαιμονίοις, καὶ οὐ Θεῷ, ‘to demons, and not to God’.

What others read at 32:8. Most Greek witnesses end the verse with ‘angels of God’; papyrus 848 and the critical text have ‘sons of God’, which McClellan judges the earliest rendering, “υἱῶν θεοῦ is the earliest rendering of Deut 32:8”; and some have ‘sons of Israel’ (step 8). Two writers of the New Testament’s own century quote the verse with the angels: Philo, and 1 Clement, which the Ante-Nicene Fathers date: “the epistle may be dated about a.d. 97”. Philo cites it from ἐν ᾠδῇ τῇ μείζονι, ‘in the greater song’, which Yonge renders “the greater prayer”. In the second century Justin knows both readings: he notes how “The Seventy have translated it”, then, arguing with a Jew, adopts his opponent’s reading.

Philo of Alexandria, On Planting 59 (Yonge) … it is said in the greater prayer, “Inquire of thy father, and he will tell thee; of thy elders, and they will reply to thee, when the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he fixed the boundaries of the nations, according to the number of the angels of God, and the portion of the Lord himself was his people Israel.”

1 Clement 29 (ANF) For thus it is written, When the Most High divided the nations, when He scattered the sons of Adam, He fixed the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. His people Jacob became the portion of the Lord, and Israel the lot of His inheritance.

Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 131 (ANF) “The Seventy have translated it, ‘He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.’ But because my argument is again in nowise weakened by this, I have adopted your exposition.

Inference (shown).

1. Hebrews quotes the Song in a Greek form that has the council’s line at 32:43, which the Masoretic Hebrew lacks, and Paul quotes the Song in Greek.
2. The Greek witnesses end 32:8 with ‘angels of God’ (most), ‘sons of God’ (papyrus 848, the critical text) or ‘sons of Israel’ (some): heavenly beings in all but the last.
3. Philo and 1 Clement, of the same century, quote 32:8 with “the angels of God”.
4. So Paul and the author of Hebrews knew 32:8 with heavenly beings in it. Strong, on two independent supports: the Greek Song they quote, which has heavenly beings at 32:8 in every form that does not follow the Masoretic Hebrew (1, 2), and the quotations of their own century, which witness the wording then read (3).

Hebrews 2:5, “it is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come”, is consistent with this, though Hebrews 2:2 gives its contrast another ground (step 17).

Limits. The inference cannot show which wording of 32:8 Paul or Hebrews had before him: the Greek witnesses differ, and Justin shows that the other reading was current too. Acts 17:26, where God “determined … the boundaries of their lands”, shares a root with 32:8’s “boundaries” (ὁροθεσίας against ὅρια) but no phrase, so it shows at most an echo.

Verdict. The absence stays. That Paul and Hebrews knew 32:8 with heavenly beings in it is strong; that they wrote of the rulers with it in view is moderate. Together these are Joint 3, which the chain does not need.

The question. In 32:8, is the Most High (ʿelyôn) the LORD himself, or a higher god who gives Israel to the LORD as one of his sons?

What 32:8–9 alone does not settle. The Most High divides the nations (v. 8); the LORD owns his people (v. 9). The two verses never say that the names denote one being, and the word joining them, kî (“For” in the KJV, “But” in the BSB), does not equate them. Nor do two names by themselves make two beings. Elsewhere Hebrew verse pairs the same two names for one God: “The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded” (Psalm 18:13), where the Hebrew sets yhwh and ʿelyôn in parallel. Read alone, the two verses leave the historians’ reading (below) as a rival of comparable support.

Part 1 · The LORD is not one of the sons. This is Joint 4. It has four routes, each with its premises listed; check 1a enters each route as a deduction and drops each premise in turn.

• Psalm 89:6–8. “Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD?” The beings are bĕnê ʾēlîm, the company of the sons of God, and the next verse places them around him: “In the council of the holy ones, God is greatly feared, and awesome above all who surround Him.” The premises: (a) the God of 89:7 is the LORD of 89:6 and 89:8; (b) the heavenly beings are among those who surround him; (c) none surrounds himself, which only fixes the meaning of the word; (d) the sons of God of 32:8 and these heavenly beings are one company (step 2, strong). So the LORD is not one of the sons. Strong, on (d). (89:6’s “like” does not carry the step alone: the same form in “Who among the gods is like You, O LORD?” (Exodus 15:11) means none other.)
• The created host. The sons of God belong to the created host (step 2, strong), and the LORD did not come to be: he “has made all things” (Isaiah 44:24), and nothing is made by itself (step 1). So he is not one of them. Strong, on step 2.
• Psalm 83:18. “You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth”: the Most High is the LORD, and no other is. In 32:8 the one who gives the nations their inheritance is “the Most High”, and (h) he who sets their bounds by the number of the sons is not one of those sons. So the LORD is not one of the sons. That Psalm 83’s Most High is the one of Deuteronomy 32 rests on the canon read as one (R1), on the one title over all the earth and over all the nations, and on 83:18’s ‘alone’, which leaves no second Most High (R2): strong. Given it, the route follows.
• Deuteronomy 32:39, the Song’s own answer. Later in the same Song the LORD says, “See now that I am He; there is no God besides Me” (32:39; wĕʾên ʾĕlōhîm ʿimmādî, ‘and there is no ʾĕlōhîm with Me’; the Greek has οὐκ ἔστιν θεὸς πλὴν ἐμοῦ, ‘there is no god but me’), and before it, “The LORD alone led him, and no foreign god was with him” (32:12; bādād, ‘alone’; ʾēl nēkār, ‘a foreign god’). Read as step 1 reads the denials, as no second who is God as the LORD is God (strong), 32:39 leaves no god above the LORD, since (j) the Most High who divides all the nations would be God as the LORD is, and more. With (h), the LORD is not one of the sons. Strong, on step 1’s reading.
• Job 42:2. “I know that You can do all things and that no plan of Yours can be thwarted”, said “to the LORD” (42:1). This route needs a premise no text states: that the one who allots the sons their nations can set their plans aside. On it, were the LORD one of the sons and the Most High another, the Most High could set the LORD’s plan aside, and Job says no plan of his can be thwarted (the solver’s Job 42:2 route, 4b). Support.
• Psalm 97:9. “For You, O LORD, are Most High over all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods”, with yhwh beside ʿelyôn and ʾĕlōhîm for “gods”. Since the LORD is himself ʾĕlōhîm (below), ‘all gods’ means all other gods; to exclude him from the sons, the route must first count every son among those others, which presupposes its result. Corroboration only.
• If 32:8 read ‘sons of El’. Tov thinks it possible that the scroll’s bny ʾlwhym grew from bny ʾl (step 8). The verse would then name ʾēl as the father of the sons, beside ʿelyôn who divides: the strongest textual form of the historians’ reading, and word for word the counterpart of Ugarit’s bn il (Gap 2). In the Song read whole it changes no route. ʾēl stands in four verses of the Song: twice it names the LORD, “A God of faithfulness without injustice” (32:4, ʾēl ʾĕmûnâ) and “the God who gave you birth” (32:18), and twice it names what is denied, “no foreign god” (32:12) and “that which is not God” (32:21, lōʾ-ʾēl). In the Song, then, the sons of El would be the sons of the LORD’s own title. For 32:8–9 read alone, the wording strengthens the rival.
• The kind and the name.
  • Measured. ʾĕlōhîm names God and the gods in one verse: “God presides in the divine assembly; He renders judgment among the gods” (Psalm 82:1), ʾĕlōhîm both times. Deuteronomy 10:17’s “God of gods and Lord of lords” (ʾĕlōhê hāʾĕlōhîm) has the form of qōdeš haqqŏdāšîm, the BSB’s “Most Holy Place” (Exodus 26:33), and of šîr haššîrîm, the “Song of Songs” (Song 1:1): a noun set before its own plural with the article. The form stands 32 times in the Hebrew Bible; in each of the 29 not said of God, the first noun is one of its own kind: the holiest of the holy things, the highest of the heavens, the finest of the songs. The Song, for its part, denies the nations’ gods the name, lōʾ ʾĕlōah, the BSB’s “not to God” (32:17), and lōʾ-ʾēl (32:21, above). Deuteronomy 4:35 and 4:39 name the LORD hāʾĕlōhîm, ‘the God’ (step 1).
  • Inference. That the LORD and the gods share a kind, with the LORD at its head, is a reading. For it: the form, which heads its own kind in every other instance, and Psalm 82:1’s one word for both. Against it: the Song’s own “not God”, and the texts that deny the LORD a like, “To whom will you liken Me, or who is My equal?” (Isaiah 40:25) and “I am God, and there is none like Me” (46:9). Maimonides defines his unity so: “not like the oneness of a pair, nor like the oneness of a species” (the second of his principles, as Mordechai Blumenfeld gives it, 2009); on that reading ʾĕlōhîm is said of the LORD and of the gods in two senses. The sequence does not rest on the kind: on either reading the sons are heavenly beings whom the texts call ʾĕlōhîm (Psalm 82:6) and who were created (step 2), and the four routes stand. ʾĕlōhîm cannot tell God from the gods, because it names both; the name can.

Part 1, graded. Strong in the canon, on four routes: two through step 2’s identity of the company, one through Psalm 83:18, and one through the Song’s own 32:39, which alone gives it for the Song read whole (strong, on step 1’s reading). Job 42:2 supports it on a premise of its own, and Psalm 97:9 agrees with it. For 32:8–9 read alone, a reading.

Part 2 · Who the Most High is: the canon’s answer. Read alone, 32:8–9 lets “Most High” and “LORD” name one person or two. Read as one canon, the New Testament names both.

• The Most High is the Father of the Son. Of Jesus: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), and “the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God” (1:35); a demon cries, “Jesus, Son of the Most High God” (Mark 5:7). Greek Deuteronomy 32:8 calls the divider ὁ ὕψιστος, the title of Luke 1:32.
• He is no son among many. The sons of God of 32:8 are many and created (step 2). The Son did not come to be: “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). So he is not one of the created sons: strong, on John 1:1–2 and 8:58 (Mysteries and open questions, 4), and on John 1:3’s ‘all things’ read without an exception it follows (check 4p). μονογενής, a word the New Testament gives him five times (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9), marks him as one of a kind, “His one and only Son” (1 John 4:9), but does not by itself exclude other sons: Hebrews 11:17 gives it to Isaac, and Abraham had Ishmael (Words read today in another sense). At John 1:18 the witnesses differ: the SBL text reads μονογενὴς θεός, ‘the only one, himself God’, others ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός, ‘the only Son’, and the BSB’s “the one and only Son, who is Himself God” joins the two.
• The LORD’s name is given to him. “There is no other God but Me”, says the LORD (Isaiah 45:21), and “Every knee will bow before Me” (45:23); Paul gives those words to Jesus: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:10). Hebrews 1:10 gives him Psalm 102:25, “In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth”. John says that Isaiah, who saw “the King, the LORD of Hosts”, “saw Jesus’ glory” (John 12:41; the Greek has τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, ‘his glory’).
  • Measured. πᾶν γόνυ, ‘every knee’, stands in the Greek Old Testament only at Isaiah 45:23, and in the New Testament only where Paul quotes that verse (Romans 14:11) and at Philippians 2:10; ‘every tongue’ with ἐξομολογέω, ‘confess’, likewise stands only in Isaiah 45:23, Romans 14:11 and Philippians 2:11. In Psalm 102 the psalmist prays, “O my God” (102:24, ʾēlî), and goes on, “In the beginning You laid the foundations of the earth” (102:25). The Hebrew has no vocative there; ‘O Lord’, κύριε, is the Greek’s (Greek 101:26). And where the Hebrew has ʿinnâ, “He has broken my strength” (102:23), the Greek has ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ, ‘he answered him’ (101:24), so that the lines that follow can be read as one speaker’s answer to another, as Hebrews reads them: “But about the Son He says” (Hebrews 1:8). At Philippians 2:10, Hebrews 1:10 and John 12:41 the SBL text marks no variant in the words cited; it marks one at Philippians 2:9’s article, τὸ ὄνομα, ‘the name’, and at John 12:41’s ὅτι, ‘because’.
• The Shema in Paul.
  • Measured. 1 Corinthians 8:6 shares with Greek Deuteronomy 6:4, κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν κύριος εἷς ἐστιν, the words εἷς, θεός and κύριος, three of the commonest in Greek: seven New Testament verses have all three (Mark 12:29, which quotes the Shema, among them). What sets 8:6 apart is its setting and its shape. It follows “there is no God but one” (8:4), and it sets εἷς θεός, ‘one God’, beside εἷς κύριος, ‘one Lord’, the only New Testament verse to have both (Ephesians 4:5–6 has them in two verses).
  • Inference. That Paul’s “one God, the Father” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6) divide the Shema, “The LORD our God, the LORD is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4), between the Father and Jesus rests on one support beyond the common words: the doubled ‘one’, set in the confession of 8:4. The rival reads two titles, God for the Father and Lord for Jesus, with no Shema in view. Moderate.
• The LORD of the Exodus. Deuteronomy’s LORD took Israel “out of Egypt, to be the people of His inheritance” (4:20; 32:9). Jude 5 reads “after Jesus had delivered His people out of the land of Egypt”, and Paul says of the wilderness, “that rock was Christ”, and “We should not test Christ, as some of them did”. Here the witnesses differ: the SBL text marks Ἰησοῦς at Jude 5 and Χριστόν at 1 Corinthians 10:9 as variants, and the KJV reads “the Lord” at Jude 5.
• Verdict. Answered in the canon.
  • The Most High is not a god above the LORD: Psalm 83:18 names the LORD the Most High over all the earth, and in the Song the LORD says there is no God besides him (32:39). Strong (Part 1, its third and fourth routes).
  • The canon names the Most High the Father of the Son (Luke 1:32, 35), and the Son is no son among many: strong (above).
  • The Son is given the LORD’s name, words and works: Isaiah 45:23 in Philippians 2:10–11, Psalm 102:25 in Hebrews 1:10, on the Greek, and Isaiah 6 in John 12:41. Strong.
  • That he bears the name as the one God whom the Father and he both are, and not as a second power to whom the name is lent, is a reading. The texts state it in parts, “the Word was God” (John 1:1), “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28), and the bowing that the LORD claims for himself alone in Isaiah 45:21–23, given to Jesus (Philippians 2:10), but never in one sentence. The rival, a second Lord under the first, has texts of its own: “one God, the Father” (1 Corinthians 8:6); “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28); “the Son Himself will be made subject” (1 Corinthians 15:28); God “gave Him the name” (Philippians 2:9). The solver finds one God in two persons consistent, two Gods inconsistent with “There is no other God but Me”, and the Father and the Word one individual inconsistent with “the Word was with God” (4m): the reading can be held, which does not show that the texts mean it.
  • Which person each name denotes at 32:8–9 is a reading: Eusebius takes the Most High as the Father and the LORD of 32:9 as “His Word”; Jude 5, on its SBL reading, gives the deliverance from Egypt to Jesus; others read one God without naming persons. Both claim one God, and neither makes the LORD one of the sons. By the rabbis’ definition, which the Sifre applies to 32:39 (below), the first does not keep it: Eusebius’s Word is “Lord in the second degree after the God of the Universe”.

Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel 4.7 (Ferrar, 1920) In these words surely he names first the Most High God, the Supreme God of the Universe, and then as Lord His Word, Whom we call Lord in the second degree after the God of the Universe.

Ancient readers. Jubilees and Sirach give the rulers over the nations and the keeping of Israel to one God, and the Targum calls Israel’s owner “the Lord of all the world”. Eusebius ranks the Word “in the second degree after the God of the Universe”, yet in 4.10 his Word comes “as overseer of His own angels, who were first set over the nations”: over the angels, not among them. The rabbis read the Song against any second power: “If one says there are two Authorities in heaven, he is rebutted” (Sifre Deuteronomy 329, on 32:39), and the Talmud holds that each text cited for “more than one god” has its answer beside it (Sanhedrin 38b; step 3). They are witnesses to how the texts were read (R1), as Eusebius is.

Among the writers quoted here, the dissent is Basilides, whom Irenaeus reports in order to refute him:

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24.4 (ANF) Those angels who occupy the lowest heaven, that, namely, which is visible to us, formed all the things which are in the world, and made allotments among themselves of the earth and of those nations which are upon it. The chief of them is he who is thought to be the God of the Jews;

The historians’ reading. Some historians read 32:8–9 itself as making the LORD one of El’s sons. Smith reads it so of the very wording the BSB prints: “In the earliest stage, it would appear that Yahweh was one of these seventy children”, and “This idea appears behind the Dead Sea Scrolls reading and the Septuagint translation of Deuteronomy 32:8-9” (Smith 2001; see also Eissfeldt, “El and Yahweh,” Journal of Semitic Studies 1, 1956). For 32:8–9 read alone it is a rival of comparable support, and there Joint 4 is a reading. The answer given here is the Song read whole and the canon read as one (R1, R2): 32:39 in the same poem, Psalm 83:18, and Psalm 89:7 with the identity of the company, with Job 42:2 on its own premise; each route derives the contrary of Smith’s reading (1a, 4b), which is consistent with 32:8–9 alone. That is a harmonization the scope adopts, not a refutation: it answers what the canon says, not what a historian holds an earlier stage of Israel’s religion believed. Israelite inscriptions of about 800 BC join the LORD’s name to an asherah (Confirmations, Kuntillet ʿAjrud), the worship the texts report and condemn: they too witness Israel’s practice, not the canon’s text.

Where “Most High” stands apart. Outside the Bible the title can name a separate god. Philo of Byblos, preserved by Eusebius, has an Elioun called the Most High, distinct from El, whom he calls Kronos:

Philo of Byblos, in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 1.10 (Gifford, 1903) In their time is born a certain Elioun called “the Most High,” … Kronos then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus, who was king of the country …

Genesis 14:22 joins the names, “the LORD God Most High”, but Cargill (2019) argues that “the name of YHWH in verse 22 is a later gloss”, so nothing here rests on that verse.

The angel who bears the Name. The reading of the Father and his Word has an Old Testament figure to point to. In Exodus the LORD says, “Behold, I am sending an angel before you” (23:20), and warns, “do not defy him, for he will not forgive rebellion, since My Name is in him” (23:21). Justin takes that name to be Jesus: “the name of Him who said to Moses, ‘for My name is in Him,’ was Jesus” (Dialogue 75). The Talmud reads the verse against a second power: the ‘Lord’ to whom Moses is called up in Exodus 24:1 is “the angel Metatron, whose name is like the name of his Master”, and 23:21’s “Do not defy [tammer] him” is read “Do not replace Me [temireni] with him” (Sanhedrin 38b): a messenger who bears the Name and is not to be worshiped. Exodus shows a messenger who bears the Name; it does not say that he is the LORD of 32:9. A reading.

The gap. No ancient text says that the sons of God of Deuteronomy 32:8 are the “seventy sons of Athirat” (Natan-Yulzary 2020) of the Ugaritic tablets. None of the ancient readers quoted here could have read those tablets: “The discovery of the Ugaritic tablets, beginning in 1929, completely changed this situation” (Parker 2000, 228). The Targum has seventy angels over the nations, but it names no Athirat, and it ties the borders to “the seventy souls of Israel”.

An ancient text of gods given lands. Philo of Byblos preserves a Phoenician account in which El, as Kronos, parcels out lands to gods: “Kronos then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus”, “gives the kingdom of Attica to his own daughter Athena” and “gives the city Byblos to the goddess Baaltis”. It names no seventy and no Athirat.

The modern bridge. Heiser builds his reading of 32:8 on Ugarit:

Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God,” 54, 71 Ugaritic mythology plainly states that the head of its pantheon, El … fathered seventy sons, thereby specifying the number of the “sons of El” (Ugaritic, bn il). … The point of verses 8-9 is that sometime after God separated the people of the earth at Babel and established where on the earth they were to be located, He then assigned each of the seventy nations to the fallen sons of God (who were also seventy in number).

The bridge, shown. Premises:

1. At Ugarit the gods are “Athirat’s sons” (bn aṯrt), and one text speaks of “The seventy sons of Athirat” (šbʿm.bn.aṯrt; KTU 1.4 vi 46). Source: Natan-Yulzary 2020.
2. Ugarit’s phrase for El’s sons, bn il, Heiser’s “sons of El”, is the cognate of the Hebrew bĕnê ʾēlîm of Psalm 29:1 and 89:6 (89:7 in the Hebrew numbering; step 2). If 32:8 once read bny ʾl, ‘sons of El’, as Tov thinks possible (step 8), the verse’s own phrase would be the counterpart of bn il, word for word.
3. Parker (2000, 231) finds Ugarit’s divine court in Job “under the title ‘sons of God’ as at Ugarit”, and notes: “The ‘sons of El’ are also called ‘the assembly of the stars’ in parallel lines in one mythic tablet, a parallelism echoed in Job 38:7”.
4. Deuteronomy 32:8 sets the borders “according to the number of the sons of God” (4QDeutj; ESV; BSB).
5. Genesis 10, in the Hebrew text, names seventy descendants of Noah’s sons: fourteen from Japheth, thirty from Ham, twenty-six from Shem, leaving aside the Philistines, who are mentioned only as an offshoot. Genesis itself gives no total.
6. The Targum has “the seventy angels, the princes of the nations” and “seventy angels, having reference to seventy nations”.

• Hop 1. If the borders follow the number of the sons of God (4) and the peoples number seventy (5), the sons of God number seventy. The Targum independently has seventy angels for seventy nations (6), though it reads the end of 32:8 as “the seventy souls of Israel”.
• Hop 2. Ugarit knows a divine family called by the cognate phrase (2, 3) and numbered seventy (1). So Deuteronomy’s sons of God and Ugarit’s sons of El and Athirat match in name and number.

Does the inference close the gap? No. It shows a match in name and number, drawn by modern comparison. It does not show that Deuteronomy’s sons of God are Ugarit’s seventy, and no ancient text makes the equation.

What weakens it.

• Jacob’s household also gives seventy: “seventy in all” (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5; Deuteronomy 10:22), which fits the Masoretic “children of Israel”. Greek Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5 count seventy-five, as does Acts 7:14 (“seventy-five in all”), but Greek Deuteronomy 10:22 keeps seventy: “With seventy souls your fathers went down into Egypt” (Brenton). The Targum keeps both seventies side by side.
• Seventy is a conventional round number. “Gideon had seventy sons of his own” (Judges 8:30); “Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria” (2 Kings 10:1). In a Canaanite myth preserved in Hittite, Baal tells Ashertu, El’s wife Asherah: “I have killed your seventy-seven [children]. (Your) eighty-eight I have killed.” (Hoffner 1998, 90–91). The Recognitions count “seventy-two parts”.
• Gods over peoples: Heiser’s step, not the tablets’. The Ugaritic lines quoted here number El’s sons; they do not say that the seventy rule peoples. Parker’s article, read in full (228–231), says nothing of seventy sons or of gods over peoples. Of the texts quoted here, only Philo of Byblos gives gods lands (above).
• Deuteronomy 32:8 gives no number. The seventy comes from Genesis 10, and the Greek lists there differ: seventy-three entries in Brenton’s text, seventy-two in Rahlfs’s (step 15).

Does it touch the sequence? No. The Ugarit comparison touches no step. The steps rest on ancient texts; among the modern works cited, Heiser builds on Ugarit for his reading of 32:8, but nothing in the chain rests on that part of his argument. The gap concerns where the picture came from, not whether the sequence holds.

The Masoretic “children of Israel” at 32:8 is a deliberate change (step 8, strong). Whether a deliberate change is a correction or a cover-up turns on intent, which no text records. The evidence below shows that the council was not removed from the Masoretic Text; whether the change at 32:8 corrected that one reading or concealed it, the evidence cannot tell.

Which way, and when. Heiser rules out the reverse (2001, 59): “It is inconceivable that a scribe would have done the reverse, that is, altering an innocuous … (‘sons of Israel’) to a potentially explosive … (‘sons of God’).” The date is disputed. Barthélemy, Himbaza reports, “bound together two supposed scribal corrections introduced in the second Century BCE”: this one, and a change in the number of Israelites who went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5). Himbaza dates this one to “the first Century CE only, when the interpretation of the ‘Children of God’ was limited to the human sphere” (Himbaza 2002, summary).

Why: three accounts, none stated. No text says why the scribes changed the verse. Barthélemy named two risks in leaving “sons of God”: it “risquerait, soit d’identifier YHWH à un des fils de Dieu, soit d’excuser le polythéisme parmi les nations” (‘would risk either identifying YHWH with one of the sons of God, or excusing polytheism among the nations’; Himbaza 2002, 527). Himbaza reconstructs another motive:

1. Read as angels, the sons of God fit accepted theology, so the old text stood (542).
2. Once the myth that heavenly beings could breed with humans was rejected, the angel reading became dangerous, and the sons of God were reread as humans: judges or nobles (541, 543).
3. That human reading fit other passages unchanged, but not 32:8: “Il n’existe pas de tradition sur laquelle on peut se baser pour parler du nombre des ‘fils de notables’ ou des ‘juges’” (‘there is no tradition to rely on for a number of “sons of nobles” or “judges”’). Hence “il fallait donc le corriger” (‘so it had to be corrected’; 541).
4. “Israel” fit: Israelites are human, and Deuteronomy 10:22 already counts seventy who went down to Egypt (541), as many as the nations Genesis 10 names (Gap 2).

Monotheism, Himbaza holds, was not at stake: “Ce n’est pas le monothéisme qui était en jeu, mais les idées mythologiques” (‘it was not monotheism that was at stake, but mythological ideas’; 546). Heiser differs: both verses “were intentionally altered in the Masoretic text for the same reason, namely, to eliminate a reference to heavenly beings in order to avoid allegedly polytheistic language” (Heiser 2001, 59). Grades: that the cause was theological, strong, for all three accounts make it so and the change removes divine beings; which theological concern, a reading.

Why not every council text. The scribes had the words; on Himbaza’s account they lacked the need: “Seul Dt 32,8 devait être corrigé. L’interprétation qui identifie les fils de Dieu aux humains est limitée au Pentateuque. Les autres passages bibliques qui contiennent la même expression ne peuvent être interprétés dans le même sens” (‘Only Deut 32:8 had to be corrected. The reading that makes the sons of God human is limited to the Pentateuch. The other biblical passages with the same expression cannot be read that way’; 546).

• Elsewhere in the Pentateuch, interpretation did the work. Where the Hebrew has hāʾĕlōhîm and the BSB “before the judges” (Exodus 21:6; 22:8–9, Hebrew 22:7–8), Targum Onqelos writes dayyānayyāʾ, ‘the judges’, and the Hebrew stayed as it was (543). Himbaza names Genesis 6:2 with these; there Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan read ‘sons of the great ones’, and Neofiti, as two scholars report, ‘sons of the judges’ (step 5).
• In Job the sons of God stay angels: Satan, an angel, attends their meeting with God, so it cannot be a human one (545).
• Psalm 97:7 kept “Worship him, all ye gods” (KJV), yet the Masoretic 32:43 lacks the line. Himbaza’s account turns on one expression, ‘sons of God’: 32:8 was corrected “parce qu’il contenait l’expression en question” (‘because it contained the expression in question’; 544). The Greek of 32:43 has it, “let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in him” (Brenton); Psalm 97:7 does not. A reading: the Qumran line has ‘all gods’, not that expression (step 8).

Correction or concealment? Both are deliberate; they differ in intent. A correction changes a text to say what the corrector holds it means. A concealment changes a text so that readers will not meet what it said. A cover-up of the council as such would remove the council where it stands; the Masoretic Text does not.

• The Masoretic Text keeps the council: “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord” (Job 1:6); “He judgeth among the gods” (Psalm 82:1, on the reading of Joint 2); the host of heaven “which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations” (Deuteronomy 4:19, on the reading of its host as beings); all KJV.
• Jewish tradition kept the idea, in the Targum of this very verse: “the seventy angels, the princes of the nations”.
• The change stands at 32:8, and on Heiser’s reading at 32:43: two verses of one poem.
• Himbaza calls it “une correction théologique délibérée et tardive” (‘a deliberate, late theological correction’; 537). Tigay, whom he quotes, states its logic: “the sanctity of the text is not so inviolable as to risk misleading people in ways that might compromise monotheism” (548). On that logic, the text was changed so that readers would not be misled. That fits a correction, and it fits as well a concealment aimed at this one verse: the one verse that numbers the nations by divine beings was changed, and the verses that interpretation had already made safe were left as they stood (above).
• One fact fits both. It is “une correction des scribes (un tiqqûn sopherim) non transmise par la tradition rabbinique” (‘a scribal correction not handed down by rabbinic tradition’; 527). That silence fits a cover-up; it also fits a correction whose reading had become the accepted one.
• Grades: deliberate, strong. That the council was hidden from the Masoretic Text: ruled out, for the text keeps it (above). Whether the change at 32:8 was a correction or a concealment of that one reading: a reading, for the evidence fits both and the intent is not recorded. Intent to deceive: not shown.

An anti-Christian motive? For 32:8, no evidence; for 32:43, weak.

• Barthélemy’s date is before Christ. Himbaza’s first-century date overlaps the first Christians, but the cause he gives is the rejected myth of Genesis 6.
• No New Testament book quotes 32:8 (Gap 1). Justin charges the Jewish teachers with having “taken away many Scriptures from the translations effected by those seventy elders” (Dialogue 71), yet at 32:8 he makes no such charge and adopts his Jewish opponent’s reading (Gap 1).
• The Masoretic Text keeps what the New Testament does use: “Thou art my Son” (Psalm 2:7; Hebrews 1:5), “Sit thou at my right hand” (Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:13) and “I have said, Ye are gods” (Psalm 82:6; John 10:34), all KJV.
• The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Torah of a separate community, has the same reading, which Himbaza takes as a parallel correction (546). Samaritan scribes had no reason to follow Jewish scribes in a change aimed at Christians; the shared reading fits a change made for a reason both communities held. Moderate.
• Jews also kept divine beings in this verse: the Qumran copy; the Greek translation, which Josephus places under Ptolemy Philadelphus, “He procured the law to be interpreted” (Antiquities 12.11); and the Targum’s seventy angels.
• Only 32:43 touches a Christian text: Hebrews 1:6 quotes its Greek line, “Let all God’s angels worship Him.” Nothing quoted here dates the Hebrew’s shorter text after Hebrews.
• The Talmud’s passages on Jesus (Israel) answer the Gospel story in narrative (moderate); they are no evidence of a change to the text, and Barthélemy’s date before Christ and the Samaritan reading stand against one.

A political motive? Not supported.

• The idea: if each god held its own land, one God would license rule over every land. Its nearest scholarly form is Barthélemy’s second risk, “excuser le polythéisme parmi les nations” (‘excusing polytheism among the nations’). Himbaza replies that reading the sons of God as angels had settled that question early (529).
• The Masoretic Text keeps gods with lands elsewhere: “that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess” (Judges 11:24, KJV), besides Deuteronomy 4:19, on the reading of its host as beings (above). A political edit would have begun there.
• Josiah’s reign ended with his death at Megiddo, “now firmly dated in 609 b.c. (June/July)” (Encyclopedia of the Bible, “Josiah”), centuries before either date, and his reform removed from the temple “all the articles made for Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven” (2 Kings 23:4). The Greek, made later, under Philadelphus, has heavenly beings at 32:8 in every form that does not follow the Masoretic Hebrew: ‘sons of God’ in what Wevers and McClellan judge its earliest form, ‘angels of God’ in most copies (step 8). So that reform left the council in the Song.

The sequence assumes a question it never asks. If the LORD alone is God, why is there anything else? Put another way: if the One (the ‘this’) alone existed, would it need an other (a ‘that’) to know it from outside? The texts quoted here answer in four parts.

1. Others made for his glory, not out of need.

• Stated. “Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come” (Isaiah 43:10). To Israel, in the same verse: “You are My witnesses”, “so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He”; three verses before, his people are “created for My glory” (43:7). Deuteronomy gives the same purpose: “You were shown these things so that you would know that the LORD is God” (4:35; step 1). The sons of God “shouted for joy” when the earth was founded (Job 38:7; step 2). Of all things the elders sing, “by Your will they exist and came to be” (Revelation 4:11). Yet God is not served “as if He needed anything” (Acts 17:25; step 1), and he knows himself from within: “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11).
• Inference. A One that needed an other to be known would depend on what it made. The texts deny the need and place God’s knowledge of himself within. So the need runs one way: the others exist by his will and for his glory, and he does not need them to know himself. Follows. Why he willed each creature, beyond his glory and their knowing him, the texts do not say; for every creature, that is a reading.

2. An other within: where the readers part.

• The Christian reading. “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son” (Matthew 11:27). “You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Justin has the Offspring “with the Father before all the creatures” (Dialogue 62; step 3). On this reading the One was never without an other to know and to love.
• The one-God reading. Jubilees, Sirach and the Targum read one God, naming no persons in him, and every other being as made (Gap 3).
• What the canon settles. Gap 3 answers the question in the canon: the Most High is the Father of the one and only Son, and the Son is given the LORD’s name, both strong; that he bears it as the one God whom the Father and he both are is a reading. On either reading the LORD is the One, and John 1:1 contradicts itself only if “was God” is read as the same person (the solver’s check 4m).

3. Real others, not the One in disguise. One picture makes every creature the One in disguise, so that the separation is an illusion and God plays hide-and-seek with himself. The texts make the others real.

• Stated. “God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise” (2 Maccabees 7:28, KJV Apocrypha). God “calls into being what does not yet exist” (Romans 4:17). To take the creature for the Creator is called a lie: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
• Measured. The Greek of 2 Maccabees 7:28 differs by edition: Brenton’s text reads ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, ‘out of things that were not’; Rahlfs’s critical text, οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων, ‘not out of things that were’. Both deny that the world was made from what already existed.
• Inference. The sequence turns on judgment: angels kept “for judgment” (Jude 6; step 5), gods told “like mortals you will die” (Psalm 82:7; step 11). If each were the One in disguise, God would be judging himself, yet the texts lay the guilt and the sentence on others. Hiding from himself, he would also have to forget who he is and do the world’s evil, which the four attributes deny: “He knows all things” and “in Him there is no darkness at all”. The solver finds that picture inconsistent with the attributes and the same set consistent with real others (check 4j). Against the One who is, strictly, each creature: follows.
• Inference: the two-level picture. A subtler form keeps the forgetting and the sin in the finite self, which is real only as appearance, and puts only its being in the One; on it God does not judge himself. The texts answer it on other ground. The creature is called into being from what was not (Romans 4:17), and God is not it: “For I am God and not man— the Holy One among you” (Hosea 11:9). At the end the two stay two, where on that picture the separation is known to be unreal: “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:3), and “They will see His face” (22:4). The texts that picture reads as oneness keep the creature a party in their own words: “in Him we live” (Acts 17:28); “you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Strong.
• Stated: hiding and seeking, with two parties. “Truly You are a God who hides Himself” (Isaiah 45:15). God set the nations’ “appointed times and the boundaries of their lands”, intending “that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:26–27; 17:26 echoes 32:8 at most, Gap 1). It ends face to face: “then we shall see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12); “They will see His face” (Revelation 22:4; step 17).
• Nor another’s simulation. The world depends on him at every moment, “in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17), and “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28); but what he holds together is real and is not himself (Romans 1:25). Both would hold of a world run on a machine as well. What the texts exclude is another maker: “I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens” (Isaiah 44:24). A world made by creatures, as a simulation run by others would be, contradicts it: ruled out. Whether his holding of all things is like a computation, the texts do not say: open.

4. How the One experiences being the other.

• Stated in the New Testament. “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14). “He had to be made like His brothers in every way” (Hebrews 2:17). “He Himself suffered when He was tempted” (2:18): he is “one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin” (4:15). This is the Christian reading of part 2.
• Stated: he shares his people’s lot. To Saul: “why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4). At the judgment of the nations: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40). He lives in them, “Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), and the union keeps two: “May they also be in Us” (John 17:21); believers become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The BSB reads Isaiah 63:9 so too: “In all their distress, He too was afflicted”.
• Measured. That reading of Isaiah 63:9 is the Qere, the margin’s lô, ‘to him’; the written text, the Ketiv, has lōʾ, ‘not’, in its place. The Greek has οὐ πρέσβυς, οὐδὲ ἄγγελος, ἀλλʼ αὐτὸς ἔσωσεν αὐτούς, ‘not an envoy, nor an angel, but he himself saved them’, with no affliction of God. So the verse is stated on the Qere only, and the sharing rests on Acts 9:4 and Matthew 25:40.
• Not stated. No text quoted here says that God comes to know himself through man; 1 Corinthians 2:11 places that knowledge in his Spirit (part 1).
• A reading. Drawn together, these texts have the One experience being the other as a gift to the other, in the Son and by his Spirit, not as a need of his own.

Where it sits in the sequence. Read this way, the steps tell of the One and his witnesses: the others made (steps 1–2); the nations paired with them and ruled by them, with the One hidden from them (step 8); the others who took the worship judged (step 11); the Son come among them (steps 12 and 15); and every nation before his face (step 17). The frame is a reading; each step’s texts stand on their own. Good and evil within that frame, the conquest, man’s nature and desires, demons, salvation, the Law after Christ, a happy life, hell, heaven and Israel are taken up in the sections that follow.

Step 1 states that the LORD is everywhere present, almighty, all-knowing and good. Each attack on that definition either needs a premise of its own or sets one stated text against another (7). Each premise is weighed here on its merits, not only because the texts do not state it. The texts answer each one, and the solver records where the contradiction lies: in the added premise or, in 7, in a stated text read in a sense its own clauses do not require, not in the texts as they are entered (The sequence as a conditional proof, checks 4a, 4c–4e, 4m and 4r); without it the set is consistent. The checks show the logic of each answer; whether an entry reads its text rightly is graded here, in the prose.

1. Power over the impossible.

• The attack. An almighty God can do anything, so he can lie, or make a stone he cannot lift; either way his power undoes itself.
• The answer. The texts set the limit themselves: “God, who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2); “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18); “He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13); “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Numbers 23:19). Almighty, in these texts, is power over all he made, with nothing “too difficult” (Jeremiah 32:17; 32:27), a phrase its passage does not limit, and no plan of his thwarted (Job 42:2). The texts that use the attack’s own words, “I know that You can do all things” (Job 42:2) and “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), are read with their passages’ limits (rule R3): Job’s ‘all things’ are his plans, which none can thwart, and Jesus answers “Who then can be saved?” (19:25). Job’s plan is the counsel that stands, “My purpose will stand” (Isaiah 46:10); his counsel for particular people they can refuse, as the Pharisees “rejected God’s purpose for themselves” (Luke 7:30; Hell under the four attributes, 2).
• The premise, on its merits. The attack counts every act as a power, and its two acts differ. A stone too heavy for its maker to lift is a contradiction, and no power makes a contradiction true. A lie is no contradiction, for men lie; God cannot lie because of what he is, and the texts give the inability as faithfulness, “He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13), and as what parts God from man (Numbers 23:19). To count the power to lie as more power is to count a lack as strength. Nor is the texts’ ‘almighty’ an empty ‘whatever fits his nature’, which a being able to do one small thing would also meet: its range is stated, all things made and none too difficult (Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 32:17), and its only limits are named. The loose definition, ‘able to do anything at all’, contradicts Hebrews 6:18 and itself; the texts’ definition does neither. Follows.

2. A God who comes down to see.

• The attack. “Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower” (Genesis 11:5; step 7); “Where are you?” (3:9); “the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth” (6:6); “for now I know that you fear God” (22:12); “I thought that after she had done all these things, she would return to Me. But she did not return” (Jeremiah 3:7). A God who looks, asks, learns, expects and regrets does not know all.
• Measured. 1 Samuel 15 has one Hebrew verb, nḥm in the Niphal, for “I regret” (15:11), for both of 15:29’s ‘change His mind’, “does not lie or change His mind” and “that He should change His mind”, and for “the LORD regretted” (15:35). The Greek renders it three ways: παρακέκλημαι, μετανοήσει and μετεμελήθη.
• The answer. The verb’s objects differ. In 15:29 it is the sentence just spoken: “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today” (15:28). In 15:11 and 15:35 it is the earlier act, “that He had made Saul king”. He does not take back the sentence, and he regrets the act. Reconciled in the texts. One prayer says both “heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain You” and “May You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:27, 30), so “dwelling” cannot mean being contained. Reconciled in the texts.
• The answer, for looking, testing and expecting. The attack’s premise is that one who asks, tests or regrets did not know. The texts give each another ground. Coming down to see is inquiry before judgment: “I will go down to see if their actions fully justify the outcry that has reached Me” (Genesis 18:21). The test of Abraham has its stated purpose, “God tested Abraham” (22:1), and Deuteronomy says what a test is for, “test you in order to know what was in your heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2): the heart made plain in the act. Jeremiah 3:7 is the speech of a husband wronged, “I gave her a certificate of divorce” (3:8). Beside these stand the texts of knowledge before the event: “Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD” (Psalm 139:4); “I declare the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). Read with them, the looking, testing and expecting are God’s dealings in time with those he knows; read as learning, they would need Psalm 139:4 and Isaiah 46:10 limited to what he has resolved, and the texts do not say which. A reading. The texts give God grief as well as regret, “He was grieved in His heart” (Genesis 6:6), and deny only that he changes as a man does (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29); whether such grief is a change in God himself, the texts do not say.

3. Calamity, and a lying spirit.

• The attack. “I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity” (Isaiah 45:7; the KJV has “create evil”). And Micaiah tells Ahab, “the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets” (1 Kings 22:23).
• Measured. Isaiah 45:7 sets raʿ opposite šālôm: ʿōśeh šālôm ûbôrēʾ rāʿ, ‘making peace and creating calamity’.
• Measured. The ‘entice’ of 1 Kings 22:20–22 and Ezekiel 14:9, and the ‘deceived’ of Jeremiah 20:7, are one verb, pth in the Piel, which stands in 17 verses: the verb of persuading and seducing, and of God’s own “I will allure her” (Hosea 2:14). Titus 1:2 calls God ἀψευδής, and Hebrews 6:18 says he cannot ψεύσασθαι: words of speaking falsely.
• The answer. Read by its own pair (R4), Isaiah 45:7’s raʿ is the opposite of peace: calamity, not moral evil. A reading. Of moral evil the texts say, “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone” (James 1:13). In 1 Kings 22 the liar is a spirit of the council that stands by the throne (22:19), who offers, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets” (22:22). The sentence is judgment, “the LORD has pronounced disaster against you”, and in that same verse the LORD’s prophet tells the king the truth. Read with 22:23 as written, the passage is consistent with Titus 1:2; read without that verse, it is not. The harder texts are stated too: the LORD asks, “Who will entice Ahab” (22:20), and tells the spirit, “Go and do it.” (22:22); “it was I the LORD who enticed him” (Ezekiel 14:9), of a prophet consulted by one who “sets up idols in his heart” (14:7); “God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11), “because they refused the love of the truth” (2:10). In Ezekiel and 2 Thessalonians the delusion is a judgment on those who have already turned from the truth, as in 1 Kings it is a sentence of disaster (22:23). The solver enters the three passages as written, lying being to speak what is false, and finds them consistent with Titus 1:2, and inconsistent with it once sending a liar is counted as lying (4d). The narrower definition, to deceive is to send a falsehood and not disclose it, fits 1 Kings 22 alone, where the king is told, and is kept for that passage (4d).
• The premise, on its merits. The attack needs lying to include sending a liar. What the texts deny of God is lying, speaking what is false (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18; Numbers 23:19). What they state of him is the sending, in judgment, of a spirit that lies and of a delusion, the lie itself coming with “the working of Satan” (2 Thessalonians 2:9, 11). In none of these passages does God speak a falsehood. Jeremiah’s “how completely You have deceived this people” (Jeremiah 4:10) is answered in the same book: the prophets promised “lasting peace”, and the LORD says, “I did not send them” (14:13–14). Reconciled in the texts. His own “You have deceived me, O LORD” is the call he could not refuse: “You have overcome me and prevailed” (20:7). That God does not lie is stated; that he sends deception as judgment is stated; and sending a liar is not lying: no conflict. Whether such judgment is just is answered in each passage by what the judged had done: a reading.

4. Evil under an almighty, all-knowing and good God.

• The attack. An almighty God could end evil, an all-knowing one knows of it, and a good one would want to end it; yet evil exists.
• The answer. The three attributes and evil contradict one another only with a fourth premise: that a good and almighty God must end every evil at once, or, in J. L. Mackie’s words, that “a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can” (Mind 64, 1955). The texts deny it, and it fails on its merits: a good agent may let an evil stand for a time, for a good that needs the time. The texts name such goods: a purpose, “what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good” (Genesis 50:20); a patience, “not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), for repentance needs time, and to end every evil at once would be to judge every evildoer before any could repent; and an end, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4). On the texts as premises the fourth premise is false, and without it the set is consistent. Follows. This answers the logical form of the problem; the evidential form, that the evils there are make such a God improbable, is weighed under Good, evil and free will. Why so much evil, for so long, the texts leave with God: “How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!” (Romans 11:33).

5. Two, and one.

• The attack. “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) makes the Word two with God and one with him; “the Father is greater than I” (14:28) stands against “I and the Father are one” (10:30).
• What the answer needs. The texts call the LORD the Most High, “You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth” (Psalm 83:18); Jesus is “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32); and they give Jesus the LORD’s name and words: “one God, the Father” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6); “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:10, from Isaiah 45:23; Gap 3). If ‘the LORD’ names one individual and the Son bears the name as that individual, the Son is the Father, and “the Word was with God” contradicts itself (check 4m). The answer needs ‘the LORD’ to name the one God whom the Father and the Son both are: one name, “the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), borne by persons the texts keep apart.
• Measured. John 10:30’s ‘one’ is neuter, ἕν, with a plural verb, ‘we are’ (Mysteries, 4). John 17:11 and 22 use the same ἕν of the disciples, “so that they may be one as We are one”, so ἕν marks a unity; it does not by itself say of what kind.
• The answer. On that premise John 1:1 is consistent: the Word is with God, and is what God is. “greater” contradicts “one” only if it means greater in nature, which the one name rules out; said by the Son who “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7), it does not. Consistent, on a premise the texts state in parts and never in one sentence: that the Son is given the LORD’s name is strong, and that he bears it as the one God whom the Father and he both are is a reading (Gap 3).

6. Only one is almighty. Two beings whose wills can clash cannot both be beyond thwarting. The “sons of the Most High” are told “like mortals you will die” (Psalm 82:6–7): their standing is overruled, so they are not almighty. If they are the sons of 32:8 (Joint 2), the one who is almighty, the LORD (Job 42:2), is not one of them. On that premise it follows; it supports the Job 42:2 route of Gap 3 (4b).

7. God, and not a man.

• The attack. This one adds no premise; it sets stated texts against stated texts. “God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19); “for He is not a man, that He should change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29); “For I am God and not man” (Hosea 11:9). The texts set the two apart as kinds: “the Egyptians are men, not God” (Isaiah 31:3), and to the ruler of Tyre, who said “I am a god”, “Yet you are a man and not a god” (Ezekiel 28:2). Yet “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5) calls himself “the Son of Man” (Matthew 26:64), and the texts record the charge themselves: “because You, who are a man, declare Yourself to be God” (John 10:33).
• Measured. Numbers 23:19 denies of God ʾîš, ‘man’, and ben-ʾādām, ‘son of man’; 1 Samuel 15:29, ʾādām; Hosea 11:9, ʾîš. The Greek reads Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29 as comparisons, οὐχ ὡς ἄνθρωπος, ‘not as a man’, and Hosea 11:9 without one, καὶ οὐκ ἄνθρωπος, ‘and not a man’.
• The answer. Each verse names the respect in which God is not a man: “that He should lie”, “that He should change His mind” (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29), and in Hosea the wrath he withholds, “I will not execute the full fury of My anger” and “I will not come in wrath” (11:9). So read, as the Greek reads two of them, they deny God a man’s falsehood, fickleness and wrath, which the texts deny of the Son made flesh as well: he “was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). Isaiah 31:3 and Ezekiel 28:2 deny that men are God, and the ruler of Tyre is a man who claims godhood. The texts tell the incarnation the other way about, of one who would not grasp it: “Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:6–7). Read in their plain sense, as denying that God could take a human nature at all, the verses would contradict John 1:1 and 1:14 on the premise of the one name (5, above); R2 sets that sense aside, and the verses’ own clauses allow the other (R4). A reader who keeps the plain sense must give up the one name, as the charge of John 10:33 does. On the one name the clash dissolves: no conflict. The clash arises only on that premise: that the Son is given the LORD’s name is strong, and that he bears it as the one God is a reading (Gap 3; check 4r). How the Son is both God and man the texts leave open (Mysteries and open questions, 4).

Mystery is not paradox.

• The terms. A contradiction is a set of statements that cannot all be true together; the solver answers ‘unsatisfiable’. A paradox, in the strict sense, is an argument that seems to lead from accepted premises to a contradiction, and it shows that a premise is false or a step invalid. A mystery is a set of statements that can all be true together, about which a question is left open: how, or why. A paradox whose steps are valid shows its premises inconsistent; a mystery is consistent and lacks an explanation.
• The test. A contradiction is shown by deriving a statement and its denial from the statements as they stand, with nothing added. A mystery is shown to be no contradiction by finding one way all its statements could hold together: not necessarily the way things are, only a way they could be. Each attack above reached a contradiction only by adding a premise or, in 7, by reading a stated text in a sense its own clauses do not require; without it, the solver found such a way (checks 4a, 4c–4e, 4m and 4r), and for God’s plan and human choice it prints one (4o). Plan and choice do conflict on one combination the texts never state, a plan fixed whichever way a choice goes that could go either way (Good, evil and free will). If no way exists, calling it a mystery saves nothing; if one does, calling it a paradox is wrong.
• Stated. The texts claim both. God is consistent: “He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13); “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). His ways exceed our knowing: “How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!” (Romans 11:33); “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
• Measured. μυστήριον, ‘mystery’, stands in 26 New Testament verses, and Colossians gives its sense: “the mystery that was hidden for ages and generations but is now revealed to His saints” (Colossians 1:26; Ephesians 3:9). In its main use in these texts a mystery is a truth once hidden and now made known, “this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God” (Ephesians 3:9), not a statement that undoes itself. This document uses the word in its later sense: a question the consistent texts leave open.
• What remains. Mysteries, not contradictions: how God’s plan and human choice work together, how the Father and the Son are one God, and others. Each is taken to the edge of what the texts state under Mysteries and open questions, below.

Good.

• Stated. “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). What he made began good: “God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
• Stated: knowing good and evil. The serpent promises, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:5), and God says, “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil” (3:22; step 3). The children who “did not know good from evil” are spared Israel’s judgment (Deuteronomy 1:39), maturity is to “distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14), and woe falls on “those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).
• Inference: the measure of good. Read by its passage (R3), Mark 10:18 does not deny that men are good, for the texts call them so: “The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure” (Matthew 12:35); “Barnabas was a good man” (Acts 11:24). What is God’s alone is goodness in full and of himself. Plato’s question, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?” (Euthyphro 10a, tr. S. Marc Cohen), asks of the good whether it is what God wills or a standard he meets. The texts ground the command in his character, “be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44; 1 Peter 1:16), and call justice his own, “all His ways are just” (Deuteronomy 32:4), the justice Abraham appeals to: “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” (Genesis 18:25). Read so, the good is neither whatever he wills nor a law above him, but his character; read the other way, Genesis 18:25 names a standard he meets. On either, the good has content the texts state, love, compassion on all he has made, and justice (1 John 4:8; Psalm 145:9; Exodus 34:6–7), and a charge that God is not good can be weighed against them, as under God’s attributes and Hell. That his character is the measure of the good: a reading.

Evil, and where it comes from.

• Not from God’s tempting. “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone” (James 1:13); “But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed” (1:14); “God made men upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
• From created wills, in the order of the sequence. The serpent deceives (step 4); the woman “took the fruit and ate it” and gave to her husband, “and he ate it” (Genesis 3:6); the angels “did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling” (Jude 6; step 5); the gods “judge unjustly” (Psalm 82:2; step 11). Paul sums it up, “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12), and it comes from within: “from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21; Demons and possession, The evil that people do).
• Stated: the census, told twice. “Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He stirred up David against them” (2 Samuel 24:1); “Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” (1 Chronicles 21:1). The desire is David’s own: Joab asks, “why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?” (24:3), and David confesses, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done” (24:10). In Job one ruin has two agents: the LORD gives leave, “Everything he has is in your hands” (Job 1:12), and says to the satan, “you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause” (2:3); and Job, blessing the LORD who “has taken away”, “did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (1:21–22).
• Stated: calamity. “If calamity comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (Amos 3:6); “Do not both adversity and good come from the mouth of the Most High?” (Lamentations 3:38); and the calamity of Isaiah 45:7 (God’s attributes, 3).
• Measured. The census verses have one verb in one form, wayyāset, from sût, ‘incite’, which stands in 18 verses; Job 2:3 has it of the satan’s inciting of the LORD. The Greek gives both census verses ἐπέσεισεν, and calls Chronicles’ inciter διάβολος. James 1:13’s “tempt” is πειράζω, the verb of God’s testing in eight verses of the Greek Old Testament, from “God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1), ὁ θεὸς ἐπείραζεν, to “Test me, O LORD” (Psalm 26:2).
• Inference. Moral evil, sin, comes from created wills: the texts state it of men in general (Ecclesiastes 7:29; James 1:14–15; Mark 7:21) and tell it of the serpent, the angels and the gods (steps 4, 5 and 11). And God tempts no one, in James’s own sense of the word, the lure of a man’s own desire (1:14), for the same verb is God’s testing in the Greek Old Testament. Both stated. The census is told twice with one verb, of the LORD in his anger against Israel and of an adversary, as Job’s ruin is the satan’s act and, in the LORD’s words, the satan’s inciting of him. Read together (R1, R2), 2 Samuel 24:1 gives the LORD’s judgment on Israel and 1 Chronicles 21:1 its agent, and the sin is David’s own: no conflict with James 1:13. Read alone, 2 Samuel 24:1 would have the LORD himself incite a sin, against James 1:13, and R2 sets that reading aside. How the LORD’s anger and the adversary’s inciting share the one act, the texts do not say: a reading. Calamity the texts give to God, as judgment (Amos 3:6) and as trial (Job 2:10), not as sin; so the account holds of moral evil, not of all that the texts call raʿ. Read this way, the sequence is the texts’ own account of moral evil: created beings turn from the good by their own will; God judges them and ends their rule (steps 15 and 17). Follows from the texts quoted. Whether they could have done otherwise is the reading under ‘Where plan and choice could clash’, below.

Death and suffering before man.

• Measured by others. Of the trackways at Zachelmie in Poland: “The trackways show that large tetrapods, up to three metres in length, inhabited the marine intertidal zone … some 395 million years ago.” (Uppsala University, 7 January 2010, on a Polish–Swedish study in Nature). The oldest Homo sapiens are about 300,000 years old (Before Adam). So animals lived and died for ages before man; and it is relevant, Michael Tooley writes, “that animals suffer, and that they did so before there were any persons to observe their suffering” (“The Problem of Evil”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015).
• Stated: whose death. “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12); “death reigned from Adam until Moses” (5:14); “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21–22). The death they name is the death of men, of all “in Adam”, and its answer is the resurrection of the dead.
• Stated: the beasts. “The young lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God” (Psalm 104:21); “Can you hunt the prey for a lioness” (Job 38:39), among the works Job is shown. Genesis gives “every beast of the earth” “every green plant for food” (Genesis 1:30), and Isaiah sees a peace in which “the lion will eat straw like the ox” (Isaiah 11:7; 65:25). The creation “was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope” (Romans 8:20), “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” (8:21).
• Inference. The account of moral evil does not reach death before man, and Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 do not say it does: by their own words the death that came through sin is the death of men, answered by their resurrection. Read so, the beasts’ death is God’s ordering, as Psalm 104:21 and Job 38:39 have it, and the creation’s subjection to futility is his, in hope (Romans 8:20–21). The rival reads Genesis 1:30 as a first world without prey, which Isaiah 11:7 restores, so that all death came through sin. On the texts alone the two have comparable support: a reading. With the measured record beside them, the second conflicts with it, as the literal timeline does (Before Adam): strong; the first does not. That powers fell before man and marred the creation, no text states; the devil “has been sinning from the very start” (1 John 3:8), and no more is said: not supported. Whether men died before Adam turns on Adam’s date, which Before Adam leaves open (F).

Evil as evidence.

• The case. William Rowe’s argument (1979), as Nick Trakakis gives it in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” “An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” Therefore “There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.” Rowe’s case is the fawn: “In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering.” The argument grants that evil is “logically consistent with the existence of God”, and holds that it “counts against the truth of theism”.
• Stated. The texts deny the step from no reason seen to no reason: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8); “How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!” (Romans 11:33). Job is their case. The reader is told the reason, the satan’s question, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9); Job never is. He is shown the earth’s foundations, the lioness’s prey and the raven’s young (38–41), and answers, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand” (42:3). The texts name goods that suffering serves: “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28); “our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us” (8:18). And it ends (Revelation 21:4).
• Measured. Job 1:9’s “for nothing” and 2:3’s “without cause” are one word, ḥinnām. The test is whether Job serves God for nothing, and the LORD says Job was ruined for nothing, for no fault of his own. Job uses the word of his wounds: “multiply my wounds without cause” (9:17).
• Inference. Against Rowe’s first premise the texts set the reply of those who “have become known as skeptical theists”: that no good is seen does not show that none is there, when the one who permits sees what we do not (Isaiah 55:8–9; Romans 11:33). Job is the texts’ own case of it, a reason given to the reader and kept from the sufferer (Job 1:9–12; 38–42). They add goods named and an end (Romans 8:18, 28; Revelation 21:4). Whether that answers the argument is where philosophers divide: the reply holds if our sight of goods is as narrow as the texts say, the argument if it is not, and the dispute is over the very premises the texts supply. A reading. The reason in each case stays open (Mysteries and open questions, 2).

Choice, stated.

• Choice. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19); “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15); “sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7); “how often I have longed to gather your children together … but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37); “the one who desires the water of life drink freely” (Revelation 22:17).
• Answerable for it. “The soul who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:20); each one will “receive his due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
• Not overlooked. God is “forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:7). The sins he “had passed over” in his forbearance are answered at the cross, “so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25–26); and “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). A broken command is not passed over: it is punished, or forgiven at the cost of the cross (Salvation). Follows, from the texts quoted.
• What is stated, and what is not. The texts state choosing, willing and refusing, and answering for each. Whether a choice could have gone either way, given all that came before it, they do not state; that is the reading under ‘Where plan and choice could clash’, below.

God’s plan over the same acts.

• Stated. “He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross” (Acts 2:23); “They carried out what Your hand and will had decided beforehand would happen” (4:28); “what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good” (Genesis 50:20); “A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). Paul puts both in two verses: “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, “For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose” (Philippians 2:12–13). Assyria is “the rod of My anger”, yet “this is not his intention”, and God “will punish the king of Assyria for the fruit of his arrogant heart” (Isaiah 10:5, 7, 12).
• Measured. Acts 2:23 joins in one sentence God’s βουλή, ‘plan’, his πρόγνωσις, ‘foreknowledge’, and the χειρὸς ἀνόμων, ‘hands of the lawless’. Exodus says both that Pharaoh “hardened his heart” (8:15) and that “the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12).
• Inference. The texts state both, even in one sentence. They contradict each other only with a premise the texts never state: that the doers of what God plans are not guilty, or that one act can have only one intent. Each premise fails on its merits too. One act can carry two intents: the brothers meant harm and God meant good by the same sale (Genesis 50:20). And guilt follows the doer’s own intent: Assyria serves as God’s rod and is punished for its arrogant heart (Isaiah 10:7, 12). Without those premises the texts are consistent (the solver’s checks 4n). Follows.
• Stated: Christ, the plan before the world. “He was known before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in the last times for your sake.” (1 Peter 1:20); grace “He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9); “the eternal purpose that He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11); “a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).
• Inference. A plan made in Christ before the world, which the fall did not take by surprise, is the same pair as Acts 2:23: what God planned, and what men chose and answer for. It is no paradox, for the same reason (4n). Follows.
• Where plan and choice could clash. If the plan that stands (Acts 4:28) is fixed whichever way the choice goes, and the choice could go either way, the two contradict each other. They agree if the plan answers to the choice, as foreknowledge does, or if ‘choose’ (Deuteronomy 30:19) needs no two open outcomes (4n). The texts state the plan and the choice; they do not say which of these holds, and readers divide on it. A reading, on either side of which there is no contradiction. Each side carries a question. If ‘choose’ needs no two open outcomes, God’s plan fixes the evil choice too, and he must be shown not to be the sin’s author; the texts’ answer is one act with two intents, the evil in the doer’s own (Genesis 50:20; Isaiah 10:7), which a reader who holds that choice needs two open outcomes will not find enough. On that side Mackie’s question also bites: “why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good”? (J. L. Mackie, Mind 64, 1955). If ‘choose’ needs two open outcomes, the evil choice is the creature’s own, and the question falls on why such creatures were made. The texts’ answer, on either side, is under Freedom’s end.

Foreknowledge does not force.

• The attack. If God knows beforehand what I will choose, I cannot choose otherwise.
• Its strong form. Since Nelson Pike (1965), the argument makes no slip from ‘will’ to ‘must’. God believed yesterday, and cannot be wrong, that I will choose A; “If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then”; what follows of necessity from what is now necessary is now necessary too; so I cannot do otherwise (Linda Zagzebski, “Foreknowledge and Free Will”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2026). It rests on the fixity of the past.
• The answer. From ‘if God knows it, it will happen’ and ‘God knows it’ follows ‘it will happen’, not ‘it must happen’; the strong form adds that God’s past knowing is now fixed whichever way the choice goes. Two accounts deny that premise. On Ockham’s, a belief about a choice still to come is a fact about the past that “is in part about the future”. On Boethius’s, God “is not in time and has no temporal properties”, and does not know before, but sees. The texts state the foreknowledge (Acts 2:23; Psalm 139:4) and the choice (Deuteronomy 30:19), and set God’s days apart from ours, “For in Your sight a thousand years are but a day that passes” (Psalm 90:4); they do not say which account holds. On either, foreknowledge answers to the choice: in each future God foreknows the choice made in it, and the choice stays open. The solver finds that consistent, and the set with the fixity of the past added inconsistent (4n). For those who hold the fixity of the past, Pike’s argument stands, and open theists reject “infallible foreknowledge” of free acts. A reading.
• Time in physics. Relativity gives distant events no ‘before’ that all observers share; the texts’ “before” is before the chooser’s own act, an order every observer agrees on along his own life. The Rietdijk–Putnam argument uses special relativity “to support the philosophical position known as four-dimensionalism”, on which tomorrow is as real as today; Howard Stein and Steven F. Savitt note that “in relativity the present is a local concept that cannot be extended to global hyperplanes” (“Rietdijk–Putnam argument”, Wikipedia). On the first, an open choice is open to the chooser, not yet made by him; neither physics nor the texts decide between them. The grade stays a reading.
• A reading: open theism, and the texts that name the chooser. That God cannot know a free choice before it is made: Acts 2:23 alone does not rule it out, for it can be read as foreknowledge of an event God planned, not of which hands would do it: “But neither speak of Herod or Pilate being preordained or foreknown to carry out this event.” (ReKnew, “How do you respond to Acts 2:23 and 4:28?”). The texts that come nearest name a man and his act: “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times” (Matthew 26:34), as it came to pass (26:75); and “Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray Him” (John 6:64), foretold “before it happens, so that when it comes to pass, you will believe that I am He” (13:19). If Peter’s denials were choices open both ways, these rule it out; an open reading must hold that they were settled beforehand, or foreseen from his character, and so not open both ways. Whether the choice was open both ways is the reading above (Where plan and choice could clash).

Freedom’s end.

• Stated. “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” and “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34, 36); “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1); creation waits for “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
• A reading. In these texts the fullest freedom is not a choice between good and evil but freedom from evil. God, who “cannot be tempted by evil”, is not the less free for it.
• The problem of heaven. If the fullest freedom does not include the power to choose evil, and the redeemed will have it, why were creatures not made so from the start? Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe quote Michael Martin: “If God could have actualized a world with free will in which Heaven is an essential part, it is difficult to see why He did not actualize a world with free will that is heavenly in its entirety.” (Faith and Philosophy 26, 2009). The texts make the end the fruit of a history. Faith is proved by testing, “so that the proven character of your faith … may result in praise, glory, and honor” (1 Peter 1:7); “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3–4); and of the Son, “He learned obedience from what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Love answers forgiveness, “because her many sins have been forgiven, she has loved much” (Luke 7:47), and the redeemed sing a song that “no one could learn … except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth” (Revelation 14:3). A creature made in that state from the start would lack these. Pawl and Timpe give the same answer in their own terms: a person “has the ability to form a moral character which later precludes that person from willing certain things”. And the end is secure: “nothing unclean will ever enter it” (Revelation 21:27), “for we will see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). The answer holds on either reading of ‘choose’; that these goods are worth the history is what the texts assert (Romans 8:18) and the objection denies: a reading. Whether the angels who stayed can still fall, the texts do not say (Mysteries and open questions, The loyal angels).

For many readers the hardest texts in the Bible are the commands to destroy the nations of Canaan. This section sets out what the texts command and what they record, the reasons they give, the war language of Israel’s neighbors, what the ground shows, and whether any of it applies after Christ.

1. The commands.

• Stated. “and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:2). “However, in the cities of the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes.” (20:16). At Jericho “they devoted to destruction everything in the city—man and woman, young and old” (Joshua 6:21); in the south Joshua conquered “leaving no survivors” (10:40). Of Amalek: “put to death men and women, children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:3).
• The skeptic’s case. Richard Dawkins calls the God of the Old Testament, among much else, “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” (The God Delusion, 2006, chapter 2).
• Measured. The verb ḥāram, ‘to devote to destruction’, stands in 47 verses of the Hebrew Bible, fourteen of them in Joshua; the noun ḥērem, ‘a thing devoted’, in 22. Both are counted apart from words with the same letters: ḥārum, ‘disfigured’ (Leviticus 21:18), and ḥērem, ‘net’, in nine verses.

2. The reasons the texts give.

• Stated: a judgment delayed. To Abram, four centuries before: “In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Genesis 15:16). The practices named: “You must not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech” (Leviticus 18:21); “They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” (Deuteronomy 12:31); “Even the land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants.” (Leviticus 18:25). The danger named: “so that they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods” (Deuteronomy 20:18).
• Stated: not for Israel’s merit, and the same measure for Israel. “It is not because of your righteousness or uprightness of heart that you are going in to possess their land, but it is because of their wickedness” (Deuteronomy 9:5). “So if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you.” (Leviticus 18:28); and so it happened, “because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God” and “walked in the customs of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites” (2 Kings 17:7–8).
• Stated: the gods behind it. “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.” “whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood” (Psalm 106:37–38). In Egypt: “I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.” (Exodus 12:12).
• Measured. Psalm 106:37 names the gods of Canaan šēdîm, ‘demons’, the word of Deuteronomy 32:17 (step 8; Demons and possession).
• Stated: Amalek’s own reason. Amalek is not among the seven nations of the land (Deuteronomy 7:1), and its sentence has a reason of its own: “I witnessed what the Amalekites did to the Israelites when they ambushed them on their way up from Egypt.” (1 Samuel 15:2); “they attacked all your stragglers; they had no fear of God.” (Deuteronomy 25:18); “The LORD will war against Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:16). The Amalek of Saul’s day is “the sinful Amalekites” (1 Samuel 15:18). It had raided Israel with Midian, “destroying the produce of the land” (Judges 6:3–5; also 3:13; 10:12), and Saul fought it, “delivering Israel from the hands of its plunderers” (1 Samuel 14:48). To its king Samuel says, “As your sword has made women childless, so your mother will be childless among women.” (15:33).
• Measured. Amalek or the Amalekites stand in 48 verses of the Hebrew Bible. None of them names Molech, or sons or daughters burned or passed through fire, as Deuteronomy 12:31 and 18:10 do.
• Stated, in sum. The texts present the conquest of the land as a judgment on named practices, the burning of children to the gods of the land among them, after a stated delay (Genesis 15:16), not as a reward for Israel’s merit (Deuteronomy 9:4–5), and they bring the same sentence on Israel later (Leviticus 18:28; 2 Kings 17:7–8). Amalek’s sentence they give its own reason, the ambush on the road from Egypt (1 Samuel 15:2; Deuteronomy 25:17–19).

3. What the texts record: the language of war, and survivors.

• Stated. Beside “leaving no survivors” (Joshua 10:40), the same chapter says that “the remaining survivors retreated to the fortified cities” (10:20), and the book goes on: “No Anakim were left in the land of the Israelites; only in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod did any survive.” (11:22); “the descendants of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites living in Jerusalem” (15:63); “they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but they never drove them out completely” (Judges 1:28). The texts speak of driving out, and gradually: “Little by little I will drive them out ahead of you, until you become fruitful and possess the land.” (Exodus 23:30; also Deuteronomy 7:22). They speak of destroying too: the LORD “will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed” (Deuteronomy 7:23), and “you will annihilate them” (7:24); “you will drive them out and annihilate them swiftly” (9:3). And the law of war sets the land apart: a city “far away” that will not make peace loses its men, and “the women, children, livestock” are taken (20:10–15), while in the cities of the land nothing that breathes is to be left alive (20:16–17, above). Amalek, whose “children and infants” were to die, is raided by David years later (1 Samuel 27:8), and “the Amalekites had raided the Negev, attacked Ziklag, and burned it down” (30:1). In Jericho “Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her father’s household” (Joshua 6:25); Hebrews honors her faith (Hebrews 11:31), and Matthew names her in the line of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).
• Measured by others: the neighbors’ language. Mesha, king of Moab, about 840 BC: “Israel was destroyed forever.” (line 7); and of Nebo, “took it and killed everyone: seven thousand men, boys, women, [daught]ers and pregnant women, because I devoted it to Ashtar Chemosh.” (lines 16–17, tr. André Lemaire, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2025). Israel was not destroyed forever. Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan: such “bravado was common in ancient Near Eastern war texts”, and “Clearly, utter annihilation was not intended; you can’t both drive out and destroy.” (Christian Research Journal 34, 2011).
• Inference. The texts’ own accounts use the language of total destruction for victories that left survivors (Joshua 10:20, 40; 11:22; 15:63): stated. Their neighbors used the same language, as Mesha did of an Israel that lived on (line 7): measured by others. Mesha’s own ban is told otherwise: of Nebo, “because I devoted it to Ashtar Chemosh”, he says he “killed everyone” (lines 16–17). Two readings follow. On one, the commands meant a decisive defeat and expulsion more than the death of every person, as the texts’ “drive out” and “little by little” (Deuteronomy 7:22; Exodus 23:30) and the recorded survivors suggest. On the other, they meant what they say, as Mesha’s ban at Nebo is told: Deuteronomy joins “drive them out and annihilate them” in one verse (9:3), against Copan and Flannagan’s “you can’t both drive out and destroy”; its law of war spares the women and children of distant cities but not of the land’s (20:14–17); and the survivors mark a command left unobeyed, “Yet you have not obeyed My voice” (Judges 2:2). The texts support both: a reading.
• The children. The deaths the texts do name are the hardest point: at Jericho “young and old” (Joshua 6:21), and of Amalek “children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:3). Each sentence has its stated reason, from the God who says, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” (Ezekiel 18:23): for the land, its practices after four centuries’ delay; for Amalek, the ambush on the road from Egypt (above). Neither reason makes the children guilty. By the texts’ own standard guilt is each one’s own, “A son will not bear the iniquity of his father” (Ezekiel 18:20), and Israel’s children “who on that day did not know good from evil” did not share their fathers’ sentence (Deuteronomy 1:39). Follows. Nor do the texts read that standard as a promise that no child dies when a people is judged. Israel’s spared children “will suffer for your unfaithfulness” forty years in the wilderness (Numbers 14:33). The book that states 18:20 gives the command against Jerusalem, “Slaughter the old men, the young men and maidens, the women and children” (Ezekiel 9:6), and the LORD’s word that he will “cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked” (21:3); and at the city’s fall “children and infants faint in the streets of the city”, and “You have slain them in the day of Your anger” (Lamentations 2:11, 21). Deuteronomy 24:16, “each is to die for his own sin”, binds Israel’s courts, and Amaziah keeps it with the sons of his father’s murderers (2 Kings 14:6). So the texts hold both: each bears his own guilt, and the judgment of a people falls on all within it, Israel’s children too. The measure later applied to Israel was the same at this point as well: stated. Read together (R2), Ezekiel 18:20 and the commands do not contradict each other: reconciled in the texts. Whether a judgment that takes the guiltless with the guilty is just is the charge itself, and there readers divide: a reading. The problem of evil itself is weighed under God’s attributes and Good, evil and free will.
• Measured. At Ezekiel 21:3 the Hebrew has ṣaddîq wĕrāšāʿ, ‘righteous and wicked’; the Greek has ἄδικον καὶ ἄνομον, ‘unrighteous and lawless’ (21:8 in its numbering).

4. What the ground shows (measured by others).

• Measured by others. At Jericho, radiocarbon dates from the last walled city give its end: “The final destruction of MBA Jericho occurred during the late 17th or the 16th century BC.” (H. J. Bruins and J. van der Plicht, Radiocarbon 37, 1995). At Ai, its excavator, Joseph A. Callaway, found a long gap: “Then the site was abandoned for about 1,200 years until about 1220 B.C.” (Biblical Archaeology Review 9.5, 1983). In the highlands, Israel Finkelstein concluded, as Omer Sergi sums him up, that “the Iron I settlers in the hill country had never been outsiders” (Near Eastern Archaeology 82, 2019). The finds are set out under Confirmations, with the readings that answer them.
• Inference. On these dates there was no walled Jericho and no city at Ai for an army to take, either about 1400 BC, where Bryant Wood dates Jericho’s fall, or in the thirteenth century, where a city of Ramesses II sets the exodus (Confirmations). That Jericho and Ai fell as Joshua tells is not shown, and on the excavators’ dates the ground differs; Wood’s redating, against the radiocarbon dates, is weighed there: weaker. The section’s reading does not rest on it: it asks what the texts command and why, in their final form (Scope). If the accounts are not a record of events, the hard point becomes a commanded and narrated ban rather than a recorded one; what such a command says of the God who gives it is the same question either way.

5. After Christ.

• Stated. When James and John asked, “Lord, do You want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” “But Jesus turned and rebuked them.” (Luke 9:54–55). “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12). “For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.” (2 Corinthians 10:3).
• Texts read the other way. “the one without a sword should sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36); when two are shown him, “That is enough” (22:38), and when one is drawn, “No more of this!” (22:51), and “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52). “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) is said of a house divided: “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” (10:35–36). “bring them here and slay them in front of me” is the word of the nobleman in a parable (Luke 19:12, 27), a sentence passed at his return, as the judgment that remains is Christ’s own at the end (For the sequence, below). At his arrest: “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews.” (John 18:36). None of these commands his followers to make war on a people.
• Inference. No holy war against any people is commanded after Christ; the war of his followers is against the powers (Ephesians 6:12; step 15). Follows. The texts cited today for killing in God’s name are weighed in Terrorism and religious extremism. The commands of the conquest were given for the cities of one land, “the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance”, not for the cities “far away” (Deuteronomy 20:15–16): stated.

For the sequence. Read in the sequence’s frame, the conquest is a judgment on the gods of a land and on what their worship did: the gods of Canaan are demons (Psalm 106:37; Deuteronomy 32:17; step 8), as the LORD judged the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12) and will judge the gods of the council (Psalm 82; step 11). After Christ the war of his followers passes to the powers themselves (Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 2:15; step 15). The judgment that remains is Christ’s own, on the nations gathered against him at the end, “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” (Revelation 19:15, 19–21; 20:8–9), while the nations that walk by the city’s light are healed (21:24; 22:2; step 17). A reading, consistent with the spine.

In one sentence. The texts command Canaan’s nations to be devoted to destruction for what they did for their gods, the burning of their children among it, after a stated delay and by a measure later applied to Israel, and Amalek for its ambush of Israel; their own records and their neighbors’ inscriptions use the language of total destruction for victories that left survivors, and whether the commands meant expulsion or the death of all is a reading; the children are not guilty of their fathers’ sins by the texts’ own standard, yet die in the judgment of their people, as Jerusalem’s did, which the texts hold together, and whether that is just is where readers divide; on the excavators’ dates the ground at Jericho and Ai differs from the accounts, which the reading of the commands does not need; and after Christ the war of his followers is against the powers, not against peoples.

This section states the case that the texts warrant killing in God’s name, then sets it against what they command, forbid and foresee. Other scriptures on violence are not taken up.

1. The strongest case.

• Stated: the texts cited. Phinehas, who speared an Israelite and a Midianite woman, “was zealous for My sake among them” (Numbers 25:7–13), and “It was credited to him as righteousness” (Psalm 106:30–31). Elijah took the prophets of Baal “down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered them there” (1 Kings 18:40). Of a brother who entices to other gods: “Your hand must be the first against him to put him to death” (Deuteronomy 13:6–10; also 17:2–7). At Sinai each Levite was to “slay his brother, his friend, and his neighbor” (Exodus 32:26–29). And Jesus: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34); “the one without a sword should sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36); “slay them in front of me” (19:27); and the whip (John 2:15).
• Measured. Psalm 106:31 joins the verb ḥāšab, ‘credit’, to ṣĕdāqâ, ‘righteousness’, as Genesis 15:6 does of Abraham’s faith. In the Hebrew Bible the two stand together in no other verse, and the Greek of both reads ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην.
• The record. At Clermont in 1095, as Fulcher of Chartres reports Urban II: “Moreover, Christ commands it. All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins.” (tr. Thatcher and McNeal, 1905). At Jerusalem in 1099 Raymond of Aguilers wrote that “men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins”, and called it “a just and splendid judgment of God” (tr. August C. Krey, 1921).

2. What the Law commanded, and to whom.

• Stated. Its death penalties need inquiry, witnesses and judges: “you must investigate it thoroughly” (Deuteronomy 17:4); “On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death” (17:6); “The hands of the witnesses shall be the first” (17:7); “A lone witness is not sufficient” (19:15–19; Numbers 35:30), in “the towns that the LORD your God gives you” (Deuteronomy 17:2). Phinehas acted after Moses had told “the judges of Israel” to kill the men joined to Baal of Peor (Numbers 25:5); Elijah, before the assembly the king had summoned (1 Kings 18:20, 39–40); the Levites, on a word Moses spoke in the LORD’s name (Exodus 32:27).
• Measured. For 13:9’s “you must surely kill him”, hārōg tahargennû, the Greek reads ἀναγγέλλων ἀναγγελεῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ, “thou shalt surely report concerning him” (13:10 in the Greek).
• Inference. The Law’s death penalties are judicial, for Israel’s commonwealth in its land, and the three acts stand inside it: stated. Deuteronomy 13:9 names no court, but 17:2–7 gives the serving of other gods a procedure and the same order of hands, and 19:15 bars a sentence on one witness; read together (R2), the first hand of 13:9 is a witness’s, as the Greek translators read it. Strong; its rival rests on 13:9’s silence. After Christ the church’s penalty is expulsion, the sword is the governing authority’s (Old covenant and new, 4), and no holy war is commanded (The conquest, 4).

3. What the texts forbid after Christ.

• Stated. “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52); “No more of this!”, and he healed the ear (Luke 22:49–51); “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews.” (John 18:36). He taught, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43–44), and rebuked the call for fire from heaven (Luke 9:54–55). “Bless those who persecute you.” (Romans 12:14); “Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath.” (12:17–21). Christ “did not retaliate” (1 Peter 2:21–23). The war of his followers is not “against flesh and blood”, and their sword is “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:12, 17; 2 Corinthians 10:3–4; step 15).
• Matthew 10:34. The next verses give the sword its sense, in Micah’s words: “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” (10:35–36; Micah 7:6); the chapter lays it on the disciples (10:21–22, 28); and Luke’s form ends, “No, I tell you, but division.” (Luke 12:51). Measured: Matthew’s word is μάχαιραν; Luke’s, διαμερισμόν, ‘division’, stands nowhere else in the New Testament. Inference: the sword is the division the message brings into a household, suffered by the disciple, not wielded. Strong, on 10:35–36 and Luke’s word.
• Luke 22:36–38. Its reason: “this Scripture must be fulfilled in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’” (22:37; Isaiah 53:12). To “here are two swords” he answers, “That is enough” (22:38), and when one is used, “No more of this!” (22:51). Inference: that the swords were to number him with outlaws, or that his answer ends a saying taken too literally, are readings. That the saying arms his followers for his cause is ruled out (22:51; John 18:36).
• Luke 19:27. The verse ends a parable of “A man of noble birth” who goes “to lay claim to his kingship and then return” (19:11–12); the words are the king’s on his return, to “those standing by” (19:15, 24). Inference: they command nothing of the hearers: stated. That they license his followers to kill: not supported.
• John 2:15. With the whip he “drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle”, and to the dove sellers said, “Get these out of here!” (2:15–16); “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.” (2:17). No one is said to be struck. Inference: that the scene licenses violence against persons: not supported.
• Inference. The texts forbid his followers the sword in his name and for his kingdom, and vengeance of their own (Matthew 26:52; John 18:36; Romans 12:19): follows. Whether a follower may bear the ruler’s sword, as soldier or judge, is a reading on which the churches divide: soldiers were told, “Be content with your wages.” (Luke 3:14), and Cornelius, “a centurion”, was baptized (Acts 10:1, 47–48).

4. What the texts foresee.

• Stated. Jesus: “a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” “They will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me.” (John 16:2–3). The test of knowing him: “If anyone says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar” (1 John 2:4).
• Measured. ‘A service’ is λατρείαν, the word of “the temple worship” (Romans 9:4) and “your spiritual service of worship” (12:1).
• Inference. The texts foresee killing done as worship and give its cause, not knowing the Father or the Son: stated. One who kills in Christ’s name does what he forbade (3), and by the texts’ own test does not know him (1 John 2:4): follows. Raymond’s “judgment of God” fits the type: a reading, since John 16:2 speaks of killers of the disciples.

5. The zealot the texts portray.

• Stated: Saul. Before: “I am just as zealous for God as any of you here today.” “I persecuted this Way even to the death” (Acts 22:3–4; Galatians 1:13–14; Philippians 3:6); “I too was convinced that I ought to do all I could to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 26:9–11); “I had acted in ignorance and unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). After: “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.” (2 Corinthians 11:24–25), and “Bless those who persecute you.” (Romans 12:14). Of his people: “they are zealous for God, but not on the basis of knowledge” (10:2). Among the twelve are “Matthew the tax collector” and “Simon the Zealot” (Matthew 10:3–4; Luke 6:15).
• Measured: the Greek. Acts 26:9’s ‘I was convinced’ is ἔδοξα, the verb of John 16:2’s δόξῃ, ‘will think’. ζηλωτής stands in eight verses of the New Testament, from Simon’s name (Luke 6:15) and Paul’s past (Galatians 1:14) to “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14); ζῆλος, in sixteen (Skeptics’ questions, 27). Φινεες, Phinehas, stands in no verse of the New Testament, and the words Psalm 106:31 shares with Genesis 15:6 stand in four New Testament verses, each of Abraham’s faith (Romans 4:3, 22; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23).
• Measured: the Hebrew. The root qnʾ is Phinehas’s zeal, bĕqanʾô ʾet-qinʾātî, ‘zealous with my zeal’ (Numbers 25:11; also 25:13), and Elijah’s “I have been very zealous for the LORD”, qannōʾ qinnēʾtî (1 Kings 19:10, 14); it does not stand in the account of the Kishon (1 Kings 18). Stated: between his two complaints the LORD was not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire: “And after the fire came a still, small voice.” (19:11–12). He sends Elijah to anoint Hazael and Jehu, whose swords will kill (19:15–17), and answers “I am the only one left” with “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel” (19:18).
• Stated (early readers). Mattathias slew a Jew sacrificing at the king’s command “upon the altar”: “Thus dealt he zealously for the law of God like as Phinees did unto Zambri the son of Salom.” “Whosoever is zealous of the law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him follow me.” (1 Maccabees 2:23–27, KJV Apocrypha). Josephus gives Numbers 25 imitators it does not have: young men “imitated Phineas’s boldness, and slew those that were found to be guilty of the same crime with Zimri” (Antiquities 4.154, tr. Whiston). Jerusalem’s zealots took their name “as if they were zealous in good undertakings” (Jewish War 4.161), “or as thinking the greatest mischiefs to be the greatest good” (7.270).
• Inference. Saul, the zealot the texts show from inside, matches John 16:2–3 point for point: zeal for God, killing, the thought that he ought, and ignorance. Strong: Acts and the letters are two accounts, and Acts has John’s verb. The early readers made Phinehas a pattern for killing: witnesses, not premises (R1). That the still, small voice reproves Elijah’s zeal is a reading, for the same answer sends the swords of Hazael and Jehu. That Simon had belonged to an armed party is a reading: Josephus’s party appears in his account of the war, and Paul uses the word of his own zeal.

6. The test for “God told me to kill”.

• Stated: the tests. Of a prophet whose sign comes about but who leads to other gods: “you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you” (Deuteronomy 13:1–3). The prophet who speaks “a message in My name that I have not commanded him to speak” must die (18:20–22). Of children given to the fire in the Valley of Hinnom: “something I never commanded, nor did it even enter My mind” (Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; 32:35). Paul: “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a curse!” (Galatians 1:8); “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1); the faith was “entrusted once for all” (Jude 3), and “in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2).
• Stated: the hardest case. “Some time later God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1); “Offer him there as a burnt offering” (22:2); then “Do not lay a hand on the boy” (22:12), and a ram “in place of his son” (22:13). “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” (Hebrews 11:17–19). The Law then forbids the act by name (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2–5; Deuteronomy 18:10): “You must not worship the LORD your God in this way” (12:31).
• Measured. Genesis 22:1’s nissâ, ‘tested’ (Wine, plants and desire, 7), is the verb of Deuteronomy 13:3 (13:4 in Hebrew), mĕnasseh, ‘testing’.
• Background. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843) asks whether there is a teleological suspension of the ethical: whether the ethical, binding on all, gives way to a higher end in Abraham’s obedience.
• Inference. A voice that commands a child’s sacrifice commands what God “never commanded” (Jeremiah 7:31) and has forbidden (Deuteronomy 12:31), the mark of a prophet he did not send (18:20), even with a sign (13:1–3). After Christ, a voice that commands a killing in his name contradicts what he commanded (3; Matthew 28:20), and Galatians 1:8 refuses it even from an angel. Both follow. Genesis 22’s command was given to Abraham before the Law, and God stopped it before the knife: stated. For any hearer after the Law the texts close Kierkegaard’s question: the act is forbidden, and the voice that commands it is a test, named with the verb of Genesis 22:1, passed by refusing it (Deuteronomy 13:3–5). Follows. Whether the command answers the moral charge for Abraham himself is where readers divide (Skeptics’ questions, 22): a reading.

7. Religious excess.

• Stated. “Do not be overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” (Ecclesiastes 7:16). Severe rules “have an appearance of wisdom” but are “of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:20–23). The convert of scribes and Pharisees is made “twice as much a son of hell” (Matthew 23:15).
• Inference. The three warn against religion pressed past what God asks. None speaks of killing: they bear on extremism as a temper, and nothing here rests on them. A reading.

8. Result.

• Inference: what follows from the stated texts. After Christ no killing in God’s name is commanded of his followers, and the sword in his name and for his kingdom is forbidden; a voice commanding what God forbade or never commanded is not his. Both follow. “Christ commands it” is ruled out (John 18:36). Remission of sins for dying in battle has no text; the texts give forgiveness through faith in his name (Acts 10:43; Salvation, 1–2): not supported.
• Inference: what is a reading. Strong: Matthew 10:34’s sword as a household’s division; Deuteronomy 13:9’s first hand as a witness’s; Saul as the type of John 16:2. Readings: what the two swords were for, whether the still, small voice reproves Elijah, whether Simon had borne arms, and whether a follower may bear the ruler’s sword.
• What the record shows. Christians have killed in Christ’s name, under a promise of remission, and called it God’s judgment: stated, in their own words. That it is the killing the texts foresee (John 16:2) is a reading. Of what the texts command, the record is not evidence (R1).

In one sentence. The texts cited for killing in God’s name are judicial laws and acts inside Israel’s commonwealth, or sayings of Jesus whose passages make the sword a household’s division and stop it at the arrest; after Christ they forbid the sword in his name, foresee killing done as worship, and test every voice that commands it by the word already given, so that “Christ commands it” is ruled out, though Christians have killed in his name.

Dust and breath.

• Stated. “Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
• Measured. Its “a living being” is nepeš ḥayyâ. The phrase stands in 13 verses; in the other twelve it names animals (Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 30; 2:19; 9:10, 12, 15, 16; Leviticus 11:10, 46; Ezekiel 47:9). The breath is shared too: the Flood takes “everything that had the breath of life in its nostrils” (Genesis 7:22), where the Hebrew has nišmat rûaḥ ḥayyîm bĕʾappāyw, the words of Genesis 2:7’s “breath of life” into “his nostrils”, with rûaḥ, ‘spirit’, added.
• Inference. Man is a living being as the animals are, and breathes as they do. What the texts give man alone is God’s image (1:27); the breath is God’s gift to all that live (Job 34:14–15). Follows.

Mortal.

• Stated. “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal” (Genesis 6:3); “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (3:19). God “alone is immortal” (1 Timothy 6:16).
• Measured. Genesis 6:3’s “mortal” is bĕšaggam hûʾ bāśār, ‘for he is flesh’.

The spirit outlives the body.

• Stated. At death “the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7); “the body without the spirit is dead” (James 2:26). Men “kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). Jesus tells the thief, “today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43), and Stephen prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Paul would prefer “to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8); John sees “the souls of those who had been slain” (Revelation 6:9); Hebrews speaks of “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (12:23). The whole man is prayed for: “may your entire spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
• Measured. The “spirit” that returns to God in Ecclesiastes 12:7 is rûaḥ, the word of 3:19 for the breath man and beast share: “they all have the same breath”. By itself 12:7 gives the breath returning to its giver; that the dead are with Christ, and aware, the later texts carry (below).
• Where readers differ: are the dead aware? Ecclesiastes says, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.” (9:5), and “in Sheol, where you are going, there is no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom” (9:10); of man and beast, “Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?” (3:21). On these, some read death as a sleep until the resurrection. Against them, the same book sends the spirit back “to God who gave it” (12:7), and speaks of what the dead have lost “under the sun” (9:6), in this world; and the later texts give the dead awareness: Moses talks with Jesus on the mountain (Matthew 17:3), the souls under the altar cry out (Revelation 6:9–10), and “to Him all are alive” (Luke 20:38).
• Inference. That the faithful dead are with Christ follows (2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:23). That they are aware there is moderate: the sleep of the soul is its live rival, which reads Ecclesiastes beyond its own frame, life under the sun (R3). How they live without the body is open (Mysteries, 6).

Can spirit die?

• Stated. God “can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Life is held from him: “If He were to set His heart to it and withdraw His Spirit and breath, all flesh would perish together” (Job 34:14–15). The raised “can no longer die, because they are like the angels” (Luke 20:36), and at the resurrection “the mortal” is clothed “with immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53).
• Measured. ἀθανασία, ‘immortality’, occurs three times in the New Testament: God alone has it (1 Timothy 6:16), and the mortal is clothed with it at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53, 54).
• Inference. Created spirit lives as God gives it life: men cannot kill it, and God can (Matthew 10:28). Only God has immortality of himself; the raised have it as a gift, and, by Luke 20:36, so do the angels. Read as ‘only God is ever deathless’, 1 Timothy 6:16 would contradict 1 Corinthians 15:53; read as ‘only God has it of himself’, the two agree (4l). Follows. Whether angels can die by God’s sentence is weighed under Hell: Luke 20:36 says that they do not die as men die, not that God cannot end them (4l).

Not trapped in matter.

• Stated. Matter is God’s work, and good (Genesis 1:31). “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), and rose in it: “Touch Me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). The hope is a body, not escape from one: “we do not wish to be unclothed but clothed, so that our mortality may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4); “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).
• The other picture. A Course in Miracles teaches the reverse: “The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.” (W-pII.5.1:1).
• Spirits that are bound. The texts bind spirits, but God binds them, not matter: angels “kept in eternal chains under darkness” (Jude 6); demons who beg “not to order them to go into the Abyss” (Luke 8:31). Unclean spirits seek bodies rather than flee them: “Send us to the pigs, so that we may enter them.” (Mark 5:12; Matthew 12:43–44)

Before birth: chosen, or choosing?

• The picture. In Plato’s myth of Er, the souls choose their next lives: “Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny.” Then “they marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness”, and camped “by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold”; “and each one as he drank forgot all things.” (Republic 10, tr. Jowett). In the church, Origen taught that souls existed before their bodies, and that “God, who deemed it just to arrange His creatures according to their merit” gave each its place, the diversity among them “deriving its origin not from the will or judgment of the Creator, but from the freedom of the individual will” (On First Principles 2.9.6, ANF). He read Jacob and Esau so: Jacob was loved, he wrote, “if we feel that he was worthily beloved by God, according to the deserts of his previous life” (2.9.7). In 553 the anathemas against Origen answered: “If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.” (NPNF). One early reader leans the other way: “For I was a witty child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled.” (Wisdom 8:19–20, KJV Apocrypha): a witness, not a premise (R1).
• Stated: God chooses before birth. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:5). Of Jacob and Esau: “before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand, not by works but by Him who calls” (Romans 9:11–12). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4); “all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16). The LORD “forms the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1). Of a man born blind the disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” and Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.” (John 9:2–3).
• Stated: the one who came down, and knew where he came from. “No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.” (John 3:13); “glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed” (17:5); “I know where I came from and where I am going” (8:14); “Jesus knew that the Father had delivered all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was returning to God.” (13:3).
• Stated: what was lost, and how it is found. Not a divine self forgotten, but a God known and refused: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him” (Romans 1:21). The call is to remember another: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). Sonship is given, not recalled: “He gave the right to become children of God”, “children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.” (John 1:12–13). Life is a test of the heart, “in order to know what was in your heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2), and a search for one who is near, “though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).
• Inference. In the texts God chooses and forms before birth, and the person does not. Romans 9:11–12 rests its argument on the twins having done nothing yet, “not by works but by Him who calls”: Origen’s reading of the same passage, a love earned in a life before, sets “not by works” aside, and the canon is not read against itself (R2). Nor do the texts tell of lots chosen, as in Plato. That souls chose or agreed to their lives before birth has no text. God’s choosing alone would not exclude a choice of their own, for one act can have two agents (Good, evil and free will). What excludes it is where the texts set a person’s beginning, in the womb, with the spirit formed within: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5); “Did not the same One form us in the womb?” (Job 31:15); the LORD “forms the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1). And in Romans 9:11 the twins’ lots were set before they “had done anything good or bad”. The knowing before the womb is God’s, and gives the self no act. Strong. Of anyone born as a man, pre-existence, descent and return are said of the Son alone (John 3:13; 17:5); angels come down and go back (Matthew 28:2; Luke 2:15), but they are not born. John 3:13’s “No one has ascended into heaven” stands beside “Elijah went up into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11): read by its own passage, it is the Son’s going up from where he came down, to tell of “heavenly things” (John 3:12), not a denial of Elijah’s taking up; a reading. And the Son knew where he came from (8:14; 13:3): the picture of a spirit that comes down and forgets fits no one in the texts, and the one who came down did not forget. Follows. Is life a game or a maze, set to see whether we remember who we are? The texts’ own pictures are a test of the heart and a search for God, who is near (Deuteronomy 8:2; Acts 17:27). Stated. Whether God experiences God through us: the texts have him share his people’s lot, and the Son made like his brothers, and do not say that he comes to know himself through man (The One and the other, 4).

Many lives?

• Stated. “Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27); “today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Of John the Baptist: “And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.” (Matthew 11:14). John himself, asked “Are you Elijah?”, said, “I am not.” (John 1:21), and Luke gives the sense: “he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). Elijah never died: “Elijah went up into heaven in a whirlwind” (2 Kings 2:11); and after John was beheaded (Matthew 14:10), “Moses and Elijah appeared before them, talking with Jesus” (17:3).
• Background (the Catholic Church). “we shall not return to other earthly lives” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1013).
• Inference. John comes in Elijah’s spirit and power (Luke 1:17), not as Elijah reborn (John 1:21), and Elijah appears as himself after John’s death (Matthew 17:3). Read as rebirth, Matthew 11:14 would contradict John 1:21: ruled out (R2). Hebrews 9:27 states the rule, with the limits the texts themselves give it (R3): Enoch “did not see death” (Hebrews 11:5), “We will not all sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:51), and those whom Jesus raised came back to the life they had (John 11:44). None of these is a rebirth into another life. One life, then judgment: follows.

What is consciousness?

• The question (a philosopher’s statement of it). “The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.” (David Chalmers, Journal of Consciousness Studies 2, 1995).
• Stated. “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching out his inmost being.” (Proverbs 20:27); “For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11); “But there is a spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” (Job 32:8). And at the beginning, God “breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).
• Background (Physics, 3). No mainstream approach to the quantum gives the conscious observer a special role, and on Tegmark’s estimate the brain “should be thought of as a classical rather than quantum system”.
• Measured by others: can a spirit move a brain? If the spirit moves the body, it changes the motions of matter in the brain. “The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s.” J. Brian Pitts argues that general relativity “tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation” (arXiv, 2019). Quantum computation in the brain, which the Penrose–Hameroff model proposes, is narrowed by Tegmark’s estimate above; S. Hagan, S. R. Hameroff and J. A. Tuszyński, re-examining his assumptions for their model, put the decoherence time at 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁴ seconds and longer (arXiv, 2000).
• Inference. The texts place the knowing of a man’s thoughts in the spirit God gives: what knows them is “his own spirit within him” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Stated. Whether the self is that spirit, or the whole man of “spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), in whom the spirit is “within him”, the texts do not say: a reading. How spirit and brain are joined, the texts do not say; the philosophers call the question of experience hard, and physics narrows the ways a spirit could act on matter without settling it: open. That an impersonal cosmic consciousness, or the universe itself, is the ground of all things, the Creator included, contradicts “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Newer schools: analytic idealism and cosmopsychism). Follows. A cosmopsychism limited to the facts of the natural world is consistent with creation: a reading (Newer schools).

At the edge of death.

• Measured by others. In the Netherlands, “we included 344 consecutive cardiac patients”, and “62 patients (18%) reported NDE, of whom 41 (12%) described a core experience.” The authors conclude that “medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE” (Pim van Lommel and colleagues, The Lancet 358, 2001). In a later study, “fewer than 10% of the 567 patients studied, who received CPR in the hospital, recovered sufficiently to be discharged”, and “Four in 10 of patients who survived, however, recalled some degree of consciousness during CPR not captured by standard measures.” (Elsevier’s release of 14 September 2023, on Sam Parnia and colleagues in Resuscitation).
• Stated. Paul: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of it I do not know, but God knows.” (2 Corinthians 12:2); he “was caught up to Paradise. The things he heard were too sacred for words” (12:4). The beggar “died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side” (Luke 16:22). And a warning: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.” (16:31). Spirits are to be tested (1 John 4:1).
• Inference. The studies measure reports of awareness from a minority of those resuscitated; they show experiences, not where the one who had them went. The texts expect the spirit to outlive the body (above), and tell of one man caught up who did not know whether he was in the body (2 Corinthians 12:2): consistent. But they test the spirits, and rest faith on Moses and the prophets, not on reports from the edge of death (Luke 16:31). Such reports are witnesses, not premises, to be tested like any other experience: a reading.

Spirit or mortal? Both. Man is a mortal creature of dust, alive by God’s breath, with a spirit that returns to God at death; the faithful dead are with Christ (follows), and aware there (moderate). He does not choose his life before birth: God knows, chooses and forms him (strong), and of anyone born as a man, coming down from heaven and returning are said of the Son alone (follows). He lives once, then faces judgment, and is not born again into another life (follows). He knows his own thoughts by his spirit (stated); whether the self is that spirit or the whole man is a reading; how spirit and brain are joined is open. He is raised in the body, and given immortality in Christ; the lost die the second death (Hell, below).

The texts call every created thing good, wine and the plants among them, and they judge what masters a person: drunkenness, sorcery, lust, craving. This section asks why such gifts exist, what medicine finds of wine, whether a plant can open a door to God and where medicine ends and sorcery begins, whether a person under the influence is still free and answerable, how craving and temptation work, what the texts say of sex, desire and delight, of marriage and the unmarried life and of the child before birth, what they say of a world full of lures stronger than nature’s own, and what they say of fasting. Each answer is graded.

1. Why plants and wine exist.

• Stated. “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food.” (Genesis 1:29), and “it was very good” (1:31). God provides “wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil that makes his face to shine, and bread that sustains his heart” (Psalm 104:15). “For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected, because it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Timothy 4:4–5). The trees of the river bear fruit “for food and their leaves for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12), and at the end “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).
• An early reader (Sirach, a witness, not a premise). “The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; And he that is wise will not abhor them.” (Sirach 38:4); of wine, “For it was made to make men glad.” (31:27).
• Inference. Among the uses the texts give for what grows are food, gladness and healing, beside beauty, “pleasing to the eye” (Genesis 2:9), and timber. They set conditions on its use, not one: thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4–5); measure, “Do not join those who drink too much wine” (Proverbs 23:20); a brother’s conscience, “It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything to cause your brother to stumble.” (Romans 14:21); the vows and offices that set wine aside (4, below); and one tree forbidden outright, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). Follows.

2. The first plant that opened eyes.

• Stated. The serpent promised, “your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). The woman saw that the tree “was desirable for obtaining wisdom” (3:6). “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (3:7). God said, “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil” (3:22; steps 3–4).
• Inference. In the texts, the one plant said to open the eyes was the forbidden one; it opened them, and what they saw first was their own nakedness. The serpent’s lie was “You will not surely die” (3:4; step 4). The texts name the door elsewhere: “I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved.” (John 10:9); “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6). Stated.

3. Did Jesus drink wine?

• Stated. “For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at this glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Luke 7:33–34). Of John it was said, “He shall never take wine or strong drink” (1:15). At Cana he turned water into wine, and the master of the banquet said, “Everyone serves the fine wine first, and then the cheap wine after the guests are drunk. But you have saved the fine wine until now!” (John 2:10). At the supper: “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29). At the cross, “they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it” (Mark 15:23); at the end, “When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished.’” (John 19:30).
• Measured. The verb behind “the guests are drunk”, μεθύω, stands in seven New Testament verses, and in all six others it is drunkenness: “another gets drunk” (1 Corinthians 11:21); “These men are not drunk, as you suppose.” (Acts 2:15). In the Greek of Genesis 43:34 it has a milder sense: ἐμεθύσθησαν, where the BSB has “drank freely”.
• Inference. Jesus drank wine: follows, from Luke 7:33–34, which sets his drinking against John’s abstaining. That he was a drunkard is his opponents’ charge, which the passage answers, “But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” (7:35), and which the texts rule out for one “tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), since they count drunkenness a sin (Galatians 5:21): follows. That the wine of Cana was wine as the word means elsewhere, which can make drunk (Ephesians 5:18), is strong: the master of the banquet sets it beside “the fine wine” served first, and calls it the better. The verb alone would not settle it: it tells of a custom, not of this wine, and in the Greek of Genesis 43:34 the same verb is used where Joseph’s brothers “drank freely with Joseph”. Why he refused the wine mixed with myrrh, the text does not say; that it was offered to dull the pain is a reading.

4. Blessing or curse?

• Stated: a gift. Wine “gladdens the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15). At the feast of the tithe, “wine, strong drink, or anything you wish. You are to feast there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice with your household.” (Deuteronomy 14:26). The LORD’s banquet for all peoples is “a feast of aged wine” (Isaiah 25:6), and the restored “will plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:14). To Timothy: “Stop drinking only water and use a little wine instead, because of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” (1 Timothy 5:23).
• Stated: a danger. “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1). “In the end it bites like a snake and stings like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind will utter perversities.” (23:32–33). Noah “drank some of its wine, he became drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent” (Genesis 9:21). Drunkards will not “inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:10; Galatians 5:21). “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to reckless indiscretion. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18).
• Stated: set aside for a calling. Priests are “not to drink wine or strong drink when you enter the Tent of Meeting” (Leviticus 10:9); the Nazirite is “to abstain from wine and strong drink” (Numbers 6:3); “it is not for kings to drink wine”, “lest they drink and forget what is decreed” (Proverbs 31:4–5); and the Rechabites, who said, “We do not drink wine”, are praised for keeping their father’s command (Jeremiah 35:6, 18–19).
• Measured by others: wine and health. The World Health Organization, in The Lancet Public Health (January 2023): “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health”, for “the risk to the drinker's health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage.” The Global Burden of Disease study, in The Lancet (July 2022), as its institute reports it: for those aged 15 to 39, “drinking alcohol does not provide any health benefits and presents many health risks”, while “for people aged 40 and older without any underlying health conditions, drinking a small amount of alcohol may provide some benefits, such as reducing the risk of ischemic heart disease, stroke, and diabetes” (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 14 July 2022).
• Inference. Wine is a gift for gladness, and drunkenness is condemned; abstaining is honored where a vow or an office calls for it, and is not laid on all. Whether wine blesses or curses is decided by measure and by what masters the drinker: follows. Why it exists, the texts answer themselves: wine “that gladdens the heart of man”. They give it for gladness, not as a medicine: the harms they name are those of excess (Proverbs 23:29–35), and the one use for the body they name is Paul’s counsel to one man about his own “frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23). Medicine counts a risk from the first drink, and at most a benefit from a little for some over forty; the texts nowhere call wine safe, and they set it under measure. So the two do not meet as claim and counterclaim: no conflict. Whether one who knows the risk should drink at all, the texts leave to measure, conscience and calling (Proverbs 23:20; Romans 14:21; Jeremiah 35:6): a reading.

5. Plants that alter the mind, and the claim of a door to God.

• Background (William James). “Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree.” “It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” (The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures XVI–XVII): a report of experience, not a measurement.
• What the research measures (measured by others). Roland Griffiths and colleagues titled a trial “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance” (Psychopharmacology, 2006), and reported, in that one trial, that “with a high dose of psilocybin 31% of the group of carefully screened volunteers experienced significant fear”. A 2019 survey set encounters with God that came with no drug beside those that came with one, “n = 809 Non-Drug, 1184 psilocybin, 1251 lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)” among them: “These experiences were rated as among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant lifetime experiences.” and “More than two-thirds of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards.” With a drug or without one, that change did not differ significantly: “The proportion of participants in each group that identified as atheist before the encounter but no longer identified as atheist after the encounter (74% and 67%, respectively) was not significantly different.” But few in the no-drug group had been atheists: as rated afterward, it “was less likely to identify their religious orientation as atheist (3% vs. 21%)”, some two dozen of its 809. The respondents chose themselves, and the authors write that the survey’s length, lack of pay and anonymity “could have contributed to sample selection bias” and that “we do not know how representative the study samples are of the larger populations of individuals who may have had such experiences.” (PLOS ONE 14). Rick Doblin’s follow-up of the 1962 Good Friday experiment, with sixteen of its subjects, seven of them from the psilocybin group, found that “All psilocybin subjects participating in the long-term follow-up, but none of the controls, still considered their original experience to have had genuinely mystical elements and to have made a uniquely valuable contribution to their spiritual lives.” and that “Despite the difficult moments several of the psilocybin subjects passed through, the subjects who participated in the long-term follow-up reported a substantial amount of persisting positive effects and no significant long-term negative effects.” He also found that “Pahnke underemphasized the difficult psychological struggles experienced by most of the psilocybin subjects.” “What he does not report anywhere is that one subject was actually given a shot of thorazine as a tranquilizer during the course of the experiment.” (Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23, 1991).
• In the ground (measured by others). At Arad, in Judah, “on the smaller altar cannabis had been mixed with animal dung to facilitate heating”, in “a well-preserved shrine that was dated to ca. 750-715 BCE”; “This is the first time that cannabis has been identified in the Ancient Near East” (Taylor & Francis, 2020, reporting Eran Arie, Baruch Rosen and Dvory Namdar in Tel Aviv 47). The texts allow offerings “only in the place the LORD will choose” (Deuteronomy 12:13–14), and tell how Hezekiah “removed the high places” (2 Kings 18:4). That the Arad shrine was one of the places their law forbids is a reading.
• A hypothesis. “A speculative hypothesis is presented according to which the ancient Israelite religion was associated with the use of entheogens (mind-altering plants used in sacramental contexts).” “The two plants are species of Acacia tree and the bush Peganum harmala.” (Benny Shanon, Time and Mind 1, 2008). Wesley Wildman, answering it, is “not confident that his speculative theory even has a stable historical referent” (Cambridge University Press, 2011). In the texts the acacia is timber, “an ark of acacia wood” (Exodus 25:10), and the account of the bush tells of fire, a voice and holy ground, and of nothing eaten or drunk (Exodus 3:1–6). In the texts: no evidence.
• Two theories readers have heard of. John Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, which ties the cross to a sacred mushroom, as its title says, drew a letter to The Times from fifteen scholars, G. R. Driver of Oxford among them, “specialists in a number of relevant disciplines and men of several faiths and none”: “the book is not based on any philological or other evidence … they can regard as scholarly.” (26 May 1970). Chris Bennett holds that Moses was to make “a holy anointing oil that contained cannabis, under the Hebrew name keneh bosem”, a case he dates to Sula Benet “in 1936”; Tyler Williams answers that “kaneh doesn’t appear to mean hemp in Classical Hebrew.” That the cross was tied to a mushroom: in the texts, no evidence, for the supper is bread and a cup (Luke 22:19–20), and no fungus is eaten. The cane is one spice of an oil to anoint the tent and the priests, “holy” and not to be used “to anoint an ordinary man” (Exodus 30:23–32), neither eaten nor burned. Measured: the Hebrew qĕnēh-bōśem stands only at Exodus 30:23; qāneh, ‘reed’, stands in 38 verses, among them reeds, stalks, the lampstand’s branches and a measuring rod, and five times a sweet cane (Exodus 30:23; Song of Songs 4:14; Isaiah 43:24; Jeremiah 6:20; Ezekiel 27:19); and the Greek of Exodus 30:23 has καλάμου εὐώδους, ‘fragrant reed’. That the cane was hemp rests on a likeness of sound: weak.
• Background (a church that takes a plant as communion). The Supreme Court of the United States: “O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV) is a Christian Spiritist sect based in Brazil”, and “Central to the UDV's faith is receiving communion through hoasca”, a tea of two Amazonian plants that contains DMT (Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418, 2006).
• Stated: the texts on such doors. Among the works of the flesh is “idolatry and sorcery” (Galatians 5:20), and Babylon falls “because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery” (Revelation 18:23). Drink muddles vision: “Priests and prophets reel from strong drink and are befuddled by wine. They stumble because of strong drink, muddled in their visions and stumbling in their judgments.” (Isaiah 28:7); “Your eyes will see strange things” (Proverbs 23:33). Visions are God’s to give: “I, the LORD, will reveal Myself to him in a vision” (Numbers 12:6). When the Spirit came, the crowd said, “They are drunk on new wine!”, and Peter answered, “These men are not drunk, as you suppose.” (Acts 2:13–17). Spirits are to be tested: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” (1 John 4:1), by their confession, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (4:2), for “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
• Stated: visions, the body and the supper. Some visions, the texts say, are the seer’s own: “They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:16); “Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, yet have seen nothing.” (Ezekiel 13:3). Daniel’s vision came after a fast, “I ate no rich food, no meat or wine entered my mouth” (Daniel 10:3), and Peter “became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.” (Acts 10:10). The supper is bread and a cup, “a participation in the blood of Christ” and “in the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:16), done “in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19); and at that table Paul rebukes the one who “gets drunk” (1 Corinthians 11:21).
• Measured. The word rendered “sorcery” is φαρμακεία, from φάρμακον, ‘drug’, ‘potion’ or ‘medicine’. In the New Testament φαρμακεία stands in two verses (Galatians 5:20; Revelation 18:23), φάρμακον in one (Revelation 9:21) and φάρμακος, ‘sorcerer’, in two (Revelation 21:8; 22:15), all of sorcery. In the Greek Old Testament the family stands in 32 verses, counting Rahlfs’ second texts of Tobit and Daniel. In the 21 that fall in books the BSB prints, it is always sorcery, first for the magicians of Egypt, who did the same ταῖς φαρμακείαις αὐτῶν, ‘by their sorceries’ (Exodus 7:11, 22), and for Babylon’s τῇ πολλῇ φαρμακείᾳ σου, ‘your many sorceries’ (Isaiah 47:12). In the other 11, in Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit and 2 Maccabees, it is medicine in seven, among them Sirach 38:4, κύριος ἔκτισεν ἐκ γῆς φάρμακα, the “medicines” of 1, and the fish’s gall that Tobit’s angel calls εἰς φάρμακον χρήσιμον, ‘useful as medicine’ (Tobit 6:4, Sinaiticus text); poison in two (Wisdom 1:14; 2 Maccabees 10:13); and sorcery in two (Wisdom 12:4; 18:13). The root does not decide between healing and sorcery; its setting does.
• Measured by others: a drug as medicine. In a trial of psilocybin for depression that other treatment had not relieved, with 233 adults: “37% of adults taking the 25-mg dose experienced a treatment response (at least 50% reduction in MADRS score), compared with 19% taking the 10-mg dose and 18% taking the 1-mg dose.” “The adverse events included a few instances of suicidal ideation or self-injury.” (G. M. Goodwin and colleagues, New England Journal of Medicine 387, 2022, as Psychiatric News reports it).
• Background (the natural account). Freud called religious ideas “illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind.” (The Future of an Illusion, 1927, in the Library of Congress’s translation). The cognitive science of religion holds “that seemingly extraordinary thoughts and behaviours can be supported by quite ordinary cognition” (J. Barrett, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4, 2000).
• Inference. The research measures experiences that people call mystical and meaningful, which the psilocybin subjects of the Good Friday experiment still prized more than twenty years later, with significant fear in nearly a third of one trial’s high-dose volunteers. Among people who chose to report an encounter, most former atheists no longer called themselves atheists, with a drug or without one; the survey found no significant difference, but its no-drug group held too few former atheists, some two dozen, to show the two rates alike. It cannot measure whom, if anyone, they met. The natural account explains such experiences by the mind’s own working, and the texts grant it for some: “visions from their own minds” (Jeremiah 23:16). That it explains them all, so that no one is met, is not shown: the research measures the experience, not its object, and how a belief arose does not settle whether it is true. The texts test the spirits by their confession (1 John 4:1–3), and that a vision which claims to come from God falls under that test is a reading of the passage. They set the Spirit against wine (Ephesians 5:18; Acts 2:15–17), say that drink muddles visions (Isaiah 28:7), and count φαρμακεία among the works of the flesh, beside idolatry (Galatians 5:20). That a plant is another way to the Father is ruled out by their own door: “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6; 2 above). That God uses a plant’s working on the mind as the occasion of an encounter with the Son, as the UDV’s communion through hoasca holds: in the texts, no evidence. They tell of no vision that came by a plant or by drink, and of two that came after fasting (Daniel 10:3; Acts 10:10). The bread and cup of the supper are no counter-case: they are a participation in Christ, received in remembrance of him (1 Corinthians 10:16; Luke 22:19), and at that table drunkenness is rebuked (1 Corinthians 11:21), so the texts tie the participation to the Lord’s word, not to the cup’s working on the mind. Whatever its occasion, an experience falls under the test of 1 John 4:1–3. That such experiences are real experiences is measured by others; that some come from other spirits is a reading, for the texts’ test to decide case by case.
• Inference. Where medicine ends and sorcery begins, the texts decide by the end a drug serves, not by the plant: they give leaves “for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12), a poultice of figs, “Prepare a lump of pressed figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover.” (Isaiah 38:21), oil and wine for wounds (Luke 10:34) and “strong drink to one who is perishing” (Proverbs 31:6), and they join φαρμακεία to idolatry and deceit (Galatians 5:20; Revelation 18:23). Strong. That a drug which alters the mind, given as treatment, falls on the side of healing is moderate: the texts also warn of what muddles the mind (Isaiah 28:7; Ephesians 5:18). A trial is a witness to whether a drug heals, not a premise. Why God made plants that can alter the mind: the texts give plants for food, gladness and healing (1), and judge their use, not their making (1 Timothy 4:4–5; Galatians 5:20). Follows.

6. Free will and responsibility under the influence.

• Stated. Lot’s daughters “got their father drunk with wine”, and “he was not aware when she lay down or when she got up” (Genesis 19:33). “Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin until they are drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!” (Habakkuk 2:15). “Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine”, “who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice” (Isaiah 5:22–23). Guilt has degrees: “That servant who knows his master’s will but does not get ready or follow his instructions will be beaten with many blows. But the one who unknowingly does things worthy of punishment will be beaten with few blows.” (Luke 12:47–48); the law sets “the person who erred by sinning unintentionally” apart from “the person who sins defiantly” (Numbers 15:28, 30).
• Background (Aquinas). “drunkenness may be an excuse for sin, in so far as it causes an act to be involuntary through ignorance”; if the drunkenness came without sin, “the subsequent sin is entirely excused from fault, as perhaps in the case of Lot”; “If, however, the preceding act was sinful, the person is not altogether excused from the subsequent sin, because the latter is rendered voluntary through the voluntariness of the preceding act”, and “Nevertheless, the resulting sin is diminished, even as the character of voluntariness is diminished.” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 150, a. 4).
• Background (research on addiction). “The initial decision to take drugs is generally voluntary. However, with continued use, a person’s ability to exert self-control can become seriously impaired.” (National Institute on Drug Abuse). Bruce Alexander, reviewing Gene Heyman, adds that “voluntary behaviour is not the same as free will” (Times Higher Education, 2009).
• Inference. Under the influence a person’s choice is weakened, or, as with Lot, who “was not aware” (Genesis 19:33), removed for the time. The texts weigh guilt by knowledge and intent (Luke 12:47–48; Numbers 15:28–30), lay a woe on the one who makes another drunk (Habakkuk 2:15), and hold the drinker answerable for drinking he chose. Answerable, by degree: follows. Aquinas and the National Institute on Drug Abuse draw the same shape: the first choice is free, and the later ones less so.

7. Craving, addiction and temptation.

• Stated: craving. “Meanwhile, the rabble among them had a strong craving for other food” (Numbers 11:4), and the place was named Kibroth-hattaavah, “because there they buried the people who had craved other food” (11:34); “So He granted their request, but sent a wasting disease upon them.” (Psalm 106:15); “These things took place as examples to keep us from craving evil things as they did.” (1 Corinthians 10:6). The drinker’s round: “They struck me, but I feel no pain! They beat me, but I did not know it! When can I wake up to search for another drink?” (Proverbs 23:35).
• Measured. Numbers 11:4 doubles the word, hitʾawwû taʾăwâ, ‘they craved a craving’.
• Stated: mastery. “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34); “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (8:36); “For a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.” (2 Peter 2:19); “I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Paul: “For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.” (Romans 7:15); “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24–25).
• Background (research on addiction). “Addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking, continued use despite harmful consequences, and long-lasting changes in the brain.” (National Institute on Drug Abuse). In Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson’s incentive-sensitization theory, “‘Wanting’ is driven by large pathways in the brain that use the neurotransmitter dopamine, while ‘liking’ is controlled in smaller, pleasure-generating hotspots that do not use dopamine.” (University of Louisville, 2018). Gene Heyman disputes the word chronic: addiction is “limited, and after some years, perhaps, a self-correcting disorder”, and “most addicted people grow out of their addiction by age 30, quite often without treatment.” (as Bruce Alexander reviews Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, 2009). The World Health Organization names a behavior, not a drug: gaming disorder is “characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities” and “continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences” (2020). Of a remedy for alcohol: “There is high quality evidence that manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, such as CBT, for increasing abstinence.” (Cochrane review, 2020).
• Stated: temptation. “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:13–15). “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Jesus was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1), and “tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15); “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” (2:18). “Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (Matthew 26:41).
• Measured. One Greek verb, πειράζω, covers both test and tempt. James says of God, “nor does He tempt anyone”, πειράζει δὲ αὐτὸς οὐδένα; the Greek of Genesis 22:1 says that God ἐπείραζεν Abraham, where the Hebrew has nissâ, “God tested Abraham”. The verb stands in 33 New Testament verses, and its noun πειρασμός in 20.
• Inference. The texts hold both halves that the science argues over, the choice and the bondage: Paul does what he hates (Romans 7:15), and resolves not to be mastered (1 Corinthians 6:12); whether Romans 7’s “I” is Paul in Christ or under the law, readers divide. That their “slave to sin” describes what the science calls addiction is a reading; that they hold the person both bound and answerable is stated (Romans 7:15–25; 1 Corinthians 6:12; 10:13). God tests (Genesis 22:1) and tempts no one to evil (James 1:13): one Greek verb carries both senses, and the context decides. Follows. That every temptation comes with an escape is stated (1 Corinthians 10:13).

8. Sex, desire and delight.

• Stated: desire in marriage. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:24–25). “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth”; “may her breasts satisfy you always; may you be captivated by her love forever.” (Proverbs 5:18–19). “Do not arouse or awaken love until the time is right.” (Song of Songs 2:7). “Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).
• Stated: delight. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is more delightful than wine.” (Song of Songs 1:2); “Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choicest fruits.” (4:16). A new husband “must not be sent to war” for a year: “he is free to stay at home and bring joy to the wife he has married” (Deuteronomy 24:5). Isaac is seen “caressing his wife Rebekah” (Genesis 26:8); “Enjoy life with your beloved wife” (Ecclesiastes 9:9). The union is mutual: “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.” “Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time” (1 Corinthians 7:3–5). Forbidding marriage is a mark of false teaching, “For every creation of God is good” (1 Timothy 4:3–4). And the first blessing is also a charge: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
• Stated: what the act joins. “Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” (1 Corinthians 6:16); “he who sins sexually sins against his own body” (6:18). And the union points past itself: “the two will become one flesh”, and “This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31–32).
• Stated: desire turned aside. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28). “Do not lust in your heart for her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes.” (Proverbs 6:25). David, “from the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman” (2 Samuel 11:2). “each of you must know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:4–5). “Flee from sexual immorality.” (1 Corinthians 6:18). “Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5).
• Stated: the married and the unmarried. Paul gives the marriage bed a guard as well as a joy: “But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:2); come together again “so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control” (7:5); “But if they cannot control themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” (7:9). He ranks the unmarried life higher, for those given it: “I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” (7:7); “The unmarried man is concerned about the work of the Lord, how he can please the Lord.” (7:32), for “undivided devotion to the Lord” (7:35); “he who marries the virgin does well, but he who does not marry her does even better” (7:38); and of the widow, “she is happier if she remains as she is” (7:40). His reasons are “the present crisis” (7:26) and “the time is short” (7:29), and “if you do marry, you have not sinned” (7:28). Jesus: “still others live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:12).
• Stated: where the texts are silent. No text names self-pleasure. The one spilling of seed they tell is judged as the refusal of a brother’s line: “But Onan knew that the offspring would not belong to him; so whenever he would sleep with his brother’s wife, he would spill his seed on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother.” (Genesis 38:9). The Law counts an emission unclean “until evening” (Leviticus 15:16), as it counts the marriage act (15:18), and names no sin and no penalty.
• Measured. The verb of Matthew 5:28, ἐπιθυμέω, is also Jesus’s own: Ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Luke 22:15). Paul’s “I desire to depart and be with Christ” has the noun ἐπιθυμία (Philippians 1:23), and the overseer “desires a noble task”, ἐπιθυμεῖ (1 Timothy 3:1). The noun stands in 37 New Testament verses and the verb in 16; the same words name the “evil desires” of James 1:14.
• Measured, in the BSB’s English. The Song of Songs runs eight chapters of the lovers’ delight and names no child of their own; the mothers in it are theirs, “my mother’s house” (3:4; 8:5). The reasons Paul gives for the marriage bed, “because there is so much sexual immorality”, the duty each owes the other, and “it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:2–9), name no child.
• Measured. The “happier” of 1 Corinthians 7:40 is μακαριωτέρα, the one comparative of μακάριος, ‘blessed’, in the New Testament (A happy life, 1).
• Inference. Desire as such is not sin: one verb names the desire of Jesus, who was without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and the lustful look (Luke 22:15; Matthew 5:28). What decides is its object and its time: “until the time is right” (Song of Songs 2:7), within one flesh (Genesis 2:24), not in the look of Matthew 5:28 or David’s from the roof (2 Samuel 11:2). Arousal is made good, and is to be ruled (“control his own body”, 1 Thessalonians 4:4). Follows.
• Inference. In the texts, sexual delight within marriage is good, and not for the sake of children alone: the Song’s lovers, Proverbs’ “may her breasts satisfy you always” (5:19), Deuteronomy’s year of joy and Paul’s mutual duty name no child as its end. Follows. Paul gives it one more end, a guard against immorality and temptation (1 Corinthians 7:2, 5, 9): stated. The limit is not on the pleasure but on the union it makes: the act makes one flesh even with a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:16), so the texts keep it within the covenant, “the marriage bed kept undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4), and condemn the look that takes what is not one’s own (Matthew 5:28). Stated. Why it was made to delight, the texts answer as gift (1 Timothy 4:4) and as a picture of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31–32), the exclusive love of a jealous God for his bride (Skeptics’ questions, 27): a reading. Whether every act must stay open to children is where the churches divide: a reading.
• Inference. The texts hold marriage good, and the unmarried life, for those given it, better for undivided service to the Lord, and they call each a gift (1 Corinthians 7:7, 32–35, 38; Matthew 19:12): stated. The ranking takes back none of the delight, for in the same chapter Paul bids the married not to deprive each other (7:5): stated. Whether his preference holds in every age or answered “the present crisis” (7:26) is a reading.
• Inference. That the texts forbid self-pleasure as such: not supported. What they judge reaches it where it is joined to lust for another, “anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her” (Matthew 5:28), or becomes a master, “I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12): there it is sin. Follows.

9. The child before birth.

• Stated. “For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13); “Your eyes saw my unformed body” (139:16); “I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5); “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). Of the unborn John: “the baby leaped in her womb”, and “the baby in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:41, 44). The Law: “If men who are fighting strike a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband demands and as the court allows. But if a serious injury results, then you must require a life for a life—” (Exodus 21:22–23).
• Measured. Luke’s “baby” in the womb is βρέφος (1:41, 44), his word for the newborn in the manger (2:12, 16) and for infants (18:15); it stands in eight New Testament verses. The Hebrew of Exodus 21:22 has wĕyāṣĕʾû yĕlādêhā, ‘and her children come out’, and draws no line by the child’s growth. The Greek draws one: if the child comes out μὴ ἐξεικονισμένον, ‘not fully formed’, a fine is paid; ἐὰν δὲ ἐξεικονισμένον ἦν, ‘but if it was fully formed’, the penalty is ψυχὴν ἀντὶ ψυχῆς, ‘life for life’. The verb stands only in these two verses of the Greek Old Testament.
• Inference. The texts state no moment at which a human life begins. They speak of the one in the womb as the person who is born, formed and known by God, with the “I” of the grown man (Psalm 51:5; 139:13–16) and Luke’s one word for the unborn and the newborn (1:41; 2:12): strong. Whether the “serious injury” of Exodus 21:23 falls on the child or on the mother is a reading; the line by the child’s formation is the Greek translator’s, not the Hebrew’s, as measured. Where a state’s law should draw its line, no text says.

10. Supernormal stimuli: a modern invention?

• Measured by others. “In the 1930s Dutch Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen found that birds that lay small, pale blue eggs speckled with grey preferred to sit on giant, bright blue plaster dummies with black polka dots.” “Male stickleback fish ignored a real male to fight a dummy if its underside was brighter red than any natural fish.” Tinbergen named such imitations supernormal stimuli, lures “which appeal to primitive instincts and, oddly, exert a stronger attraction than real things” (Deirdre Barrett, The Scientist). Her book: “We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects—from candy to pornography to atomic bombs—that gratify outmoded but persistent drives with dangerous results.” “Evolution, quite simply, has been unable to keep pace with the rapid changes of modern life.” (Supernormal Stimuli, Norton, 2010).
• Stated: lures and appetites. Honey: “If you find honey, eat just what you need, lest you have too much and vomit it up.” (Proverbs 25:16); “It is not good to eat too much honey” (25:27). The ruler’s table: “put a knife to your throat if you possess a great appetite. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.” (23:2–3). The heightened face and voice: Jezebel “painted her eyes, adorned her head” (2 Kings 9:30); “the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey” (Proverbs 5:3), and “with her flattering lips she lures him” (7:21). The appetite that is never filled: “the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8); “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.” (Proverbs 27:20). And the made thing that captures its makers: idols “have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see”, and “Those who make them become like them, as do all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:5, 8).
• Inference. The pull of the supernormal is old: Tinbergen found it in animals, with lures he made, and the texts know a like pattern, in honey, the painted face and flattering lips. What Barrett calls modern is the “glut”: the scale. That the texts’ warnings answer what the science calls supernormal stimuli is a reading. The texts’ answer for the glut is the one they give for honey: take “just what you need”, refuse what deceives (Proverbs 23:3), and turn to what satisfies (12).

11. Fasting.

• Stated: the fasts of the texts. The one fast the Law commands is the Day of Atonement: “On the tenth day of the seventh month, you shall humble yourselves and not do any work” (Leviticus 16:29). Others are fasts of grief and plea. David “fasted and went into his house and spent the night lying in sackcloth on the ground” (2 Samuel 12:16), and when the child died, “But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?” (12:23). Esther: “Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day” (Esther 4:16). Ezra “proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God” (Ezra 8:21). Nineveh “proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth”, and “When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented” (Jonah 3:5, 10). Daniel: “I ate no rich food, no meat or wine entered my mouth” (Daniel 10:3). Jesus: “After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.” (Matthew 4:2). Moses, at Sinai, “was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water” (Exodus 34:28); Paul, after the road to Damascus, “did not eat or drink anything” for three days (Acts 9:9). The church: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said” (Acts 13:2); elders were appointed “praying and fasting” (14:23); Anna “worshiped night and day, fasting and praying” (Luke 2:37).
• Stated: how, and why. “When you fast, do not be somber like the hypocrites”; “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be obvious to men, but only to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:16–18). Of his disciples: “But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.” (9:15). The fast God chooses: “Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?” “Isn’t it to share your bread with the hungry” (Isaiah 58:6–7); against a fast of strife, “You cannot fast as you do today and have your voice be heard on high.” (58:4); “was it really for Me that you fasted?” (Zechariah 7:5). “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning”, “So rend your hearts and not your garments” (Joel 2:12–13).
• Stated: its limits. The Pharisee’s boast, “I fast twice a week and pay tithes of all that I acquire.” (Luke 18:12), and the tax collector, not he, “went home justified” (18:14). Severity is no cure: such rules “are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:23); and some “require abstinence from certain foods that God has created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3). In marriage, abstaining is “by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer” (1 Corinthians 7:5).
• Measured. In the critical Greek, νηστεύω, ‘to fast’, stands in 15 New Testament verses and νηστεία, ‘fasting’, in 5. In four places the text behind the KJV adds fasting where the critical text has prayer alone, or nothing: “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:29, KJV), where the BSB reads “This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.”; Matthew 17:21, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” (KJV), a verse the critical text lacks; 1 Corinthians 7:5, “fasting and prayer” (KJV); and Acts 10:30, “I was fasting” (KJV). The Law’s one fast, Leviticus 16:29, is in Hebrew tĕʿannû ʾet-napšōtêkem, ‘you shall humble your souls’. The verb ṣûm, ‘to fast’, stands in 17 verses of the Hebrew Bible, and the noun ṣôm, ‘a fast’, in 22.
• Measured by others. On fasting for health, a review: “Preclinical studies and clinical trials have shown that intermittent fasting has broad-spectrum benefits for many health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurologic disorders.” “It remains to be determined whether people can maintain intermittent fasting for years and potentially accrue the benefits seen in animal models.” (Rafael de Cabo and Mark Mattson, New England Journal of Medicine 381, 2019). The trials since weigh less. A year-long trial of 139 patients: “Among patients with obesity, a regimen of time-restricted eating was not more beneficial with regard to reduction in body weight, body fat, or metabolic risk factors than daily calorie restriction.” (Liu and colleagues, New England Journal of Medicine 386, 2022). A Cochrane review of “22 studies with 1995 people”: “Compared to traditional dietary advice (like restricting calories or eating different types of foods), intermittent fasting may make little to no difference to weight loss and quality of life in adults living with overweight or obesity.” (Garegnani and colleagues, Cochrane, 16 February 2026).
• Background (a clinic’s guidance). “While intermittent fasting is safe for many people, it may not be a healthy pattern for people who:” “Have an eating disorder.” “Are pregnant or breastfeeding.” “Are at high risk of bone loss and falls.” (Mayo Clinic).
• Measured by others: longer fasts. In 1,422 people fasting for 4 to 21 days on a “daily caloric intake of 200–250 kcal” who “drink 3 L of water or non-caloric herbal teas daily”, “under daily supervision of nurses and specialized physicians”: “Buchinger periodic fasting lasting from 4 to 21 days is safe and well tolerated.” (Wilhelmi de Toledo and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2019). The danger lies in eating again: guidance published by NHS Scotland counts among “Patients at High Risk of developing Re-feeding Syndrome” those with “Very little or no nutritional intake for more than 10 days”.
• Inference. In the texts, fasting is humbling oneself before God, joined to prayer, grief, repentance or a calling (Leviticus 16:29; Ezra 8:21; Acts 13:2–3), and Jesus assumes that his followers will fast (Matthew 6:16; 9:15). Its worth lies in its aim: done for show, it has its reward already (Matthew 6:16), and the fast God chooses frees the oppressed and feeds the hungry (Isaiah 58:6–7). It earns no justification (Luke 18:14), though, done in secret, the Father rewards it (Matthew 6:18); it does not tame the flesh by severity (Colossians 2:23), and forbids nothing God made good (1 Timothy 4:3). Follows. It is the appetite ruled for a time, for God’s sake: the self-control of 7 and 12, practiced. The research on fasting and health is a witness, not a premise. On intermittent fasting, a review reports benefits that rest in part on animal studies, and the trials since find little or no difference in weight lost against ordinary dietary advice or calorie restriction; a clinic’s guidance names those for whom it may not be safe. On longer fasts, supervised fasts of up to three weeks, with water and a little food, proved safe and well tolerated, and the danger after ten days with little or no food is in eating again. The texts command no long fast: the Law’s one fast is a day (Leviticus 16:29), and the forty days of Moses and of Jesus and the three waterless days of Esther and of Paul are told, not laid on others (Exodus 34:28; Matthew 4:2; Esther 4:16; Acts 9:9). So to copy the longest of them without medical care is what the texts do not command and what medicine warns of in eating again: follows. That a demon of the kind in Mark 9 needs fasting to be cast out rests on the later text alone: in the text read here, no evidence.

12. Now what? The remedy the texts give.

• Stated. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2); “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16), whose fruit ends in “gentleness, and self-control” (5:22–23); “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (5:24). “make no provision for the desires of the flesh” (Romans 13:14); “Flee from youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, together with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22); “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8). The deeper thirst: “Why spend money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2); “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” (John 4:13–14); “For He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” (Psalm 107:9); “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3).
• Measured. ἐγκράτεια, ‘self-control’, the last of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23), stands in three New Testament verses (Acts 24:25; Galatians 5:23; 2 Peter 1:6).
• Inference. The texts’ remedy: walk by the Spirit, and be renewed in mind (Galatians 5:16, 22–23; Romans 12:2); refuse what masters (Romans 13:14; 1 Corinthians 6:12); fill the want with what satisfies (Isaiah 55:2; John 4:14); and do it among others who call on the Lord (2 Timothy 2:22). Follows from the texts quoted. The Cochrane finding for twelve-step programs, on abstinence from alcohol (7), is a witness, not a premise, and a narrow one. Research on how they work finds that they help “through multiple mechanisms simultaneously but, in particular, through facilitating helpful social network changes”, and that the more severe also gain from changes in “spirituality/religiosity” (J. F. Kelly, Addiction 112, 2017, as recoveryanswers.org summarizes it). So it bears on the remedy’s last part, recovery among others (2 Timothy 2:22), not on the rest; and the program’s “God as we understood Him” (Step 3) is not the door the texts name (John 14:6).

Does it touch the sequence? Twice, and both times at the nations. At Pentecost, which an ancient reading takes as Babel undone (step 16), the Spirit poured out was taken for wine and denied to be wine: “They are drunk on new wine!”; “These men are not drunk, as you suppose.” (Acts 2:13, 15). And at the end: “all the nations were deceived by your sorcery” (Revelation 18:23), where “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2; step 17). Measured: both verses name the nations: ἐν τῇ φαρμακείᾳ σου ἐπλανήθησαν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, ‘by your sorcery all the nations were deceived’, and τὰ φύλλα τοῦ ξύλου εἰς θεραπείαν τῶν ἐθνῶν, ‘the leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations’. In the sequence’s last word on the nations, Babylon’s sorcery deceives them and the tree of life heals them. Consistent with the spine; it adds no premise.

In one sentence. Plants and wine are good gifts, given for food, gladness and healing among other uses, under conditions the texts set; medicine counts a risk in wine from the first drink, which meets no claim of the texts (no conflict); drunkenness, sorcery and craving are false masters that the texts condemn, and they tell medicine from sorcery by the end a drug serves, not by the plant (strong); under the influence a person is weakened, or for a time unaware, and answerable for what he chose; sexual delight is good within marriage, and not for children alone, marriage is also a guard against immorality, and the unmarried life, for those given it, is better for undivided service; desire is good in its time and object, and self-pleasure, which no text names, is sin where lust or mastery joins it; in the texts the child in the womb is the person who is born (strong); the pull of supernormal stimuli is old, and only their scale is new; fasting is a humbling before God with an aim, which earns no justification, and the texts command no long fast; and the texts’ door to God is the Son and his Spirit: a plant as another way is ruled out, and as the occasion of an encounter it has no evidence in the texts.

The texts call demons unclean or evil spirits, under the devil and within God’s limits, and they call the gods behind the idols demons; where demons come from, no canonical text says. In the Gospels and Acts the possessed are sufferers whom the Son sets free; where Satan enters one who consents to the deed, the deed is his, both strong; and the evil that people do, the texts place in the heart. Where they name a spirit as the cause of a boy’s seizures, medicine names the brain, and there the two part.

What they are.

• Stated. “a man with an unclean spirit” (Mark 1:23); “healed of evil spirits and infirmities” (Luke 8:2). They know the Son: “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24); “Jesus, Son of the Most High God” (5:7; Gap 3). They believe and fear: “Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19); “Have You come here to torture us before the appointed time?” (Matthew 8:29); they beg “not to order them to go into the Abyss” (Luke 8:31; Man). They have a prince, and Jesus answers of him as Satan: “Only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, does this man drive out demons.” “If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:24, 26).
• Stated: within God’s limits. “a spirit of distress from the LORD began to torment him” (1 Samuel 16:14; on a spirit sent in judgment, God’s attributes, 3); “God sent a spirit of animosity between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem” (Judges 9:23); to the satan, “you must not lay a hand on the man himself” (Job 1:12; step 10).
• Stated: the gods behind the idols. The Song calls the “foreign gods” demons: “They sacrificed to demons, not to God” (Deuteronomy 32:16–17; step 8). Paul after it: “the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons” (1 Corinthians 10:20); and in Revelation, “They did not stop worshiping demons and idols” (Revelation 9:20). No text calls a possessing spirit a god.
• Stated: their end. They fear a time set for their torment (Matthew 8:29). If they are the devil’s angels, a reading weighed below, their end is “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
• Measured. The Hebrew šēdîm, ‘demons’, stands in two verses, Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37, both of gods to whom Israel sacrificed; the word “is related to Akkadian šêdu”, a demon “good or evil” (Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Demons, Demonology”). Saul’s “spirit of distress” is in Hebrew rûaḥ rāʿâ, and in Greek πνεῦμα πονηρόν, ‘an evil spirit’, the phrase of Luke 8:2’s “evil spirits”, πνευμάτων πονηρῶν. In the Greek New Testament δαιμονίζομαι, ‘to be possessed by a demon’, stands in thirteen verses, all in the Gospels: seven in Matthew, four in Mark, one each in Luke and John. πνεῦμα with ἀκάθαρτος, ‘unclean spirit’, stands together in twenty-three verses: nineteen in the Gospels, two in Acts (5:16; 8:7) and two in Revelation (16:13; 18:2); Luke 4:33 joins the words, πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου, “the spirit of an unclean demon”. Neither stands in the letters.
• Stated: the letters. They speak of the devil’s “schemes” (Ephesians 6:11), a “foothold” (4:27), “the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (2:2), “the snare of the devil, who has taken them captive to his will” (2 Timothy 2:26), a wisdom that is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15), and “deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons” (1 Timothy 4:1): influence, captivity and deceit, not possession.
• Measured. The Greek translation has demons in six verses where the BSB has none. “For all the gods of the nations are idols” (Psalm 96:5) is, in Greek Psalm 95:5, πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια, ‘all the gods of the nations are demons’ (step 11). In Psalm 91:6, “the calamity that destroys at noon”, the Hebrew qeṭeb yāšûd ṣohŏrāyim, the Greek has συμπτώματος καὶ δαιμονίου μεσημβρινοῦ, ‘mishap and a noonday demon’: the ‘demon’ stands where the Hebrew has yāšûd, ‘destroys’, and Matthias Henze judges that the translator’s Hebrew “read וקטב ושֵׁד צהרים”, with šēd, ‘demon’. The “wild goats” that “leap about” in fallen Babylon (Isaiah 13:21), śĕʿîrîm, the word the BSB renders “goat demons” in Leviticus 17:7, are δαιμόνια that ὀρχήσονται, ‘demons’ that ‘will dance’. The “desert creatures” of Isaiah 34:14, ṣiyyîm, are δαιμόνια. In Isaiah 65:3 the incense burned “on altars of brick” burns τοῖς δαιμονίοις ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν, ‘to demons, which do not exist’; and in 65:11 the “table for Fortune” is laid τῷ δαίμονι, ‘for the demon’.
• Where readers differ: where they come from. No canonical text says. Fallen angels: the dragon “was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12:9), and the demons’ prince is Satan (Matthew 12:26); against it, the angels who sinned are “kept in eternal chains under darkness” (Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4), though Revelation 12:9 sets some on the earth. The spirits of the giants: in 1 Enoch, “the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth” (15:8, Charles); in Jubilees the Watchers are “the fathers of these spirits” (10:5; step 6); and Justin says the angels “begat children who are those that are called demons” (Second Apology 5). The spirits of the wicked dead: Josephus calls demons “no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive and kill them” (Jewish War 7.178–189, tr. Whiston). And the sequence’s own: the Song calls the nations’ gods demons (Deuteronomy 32:17), and on route B those gods belong to the company 32:8 calls the sons of God (step 8, moderate). A reading.

Possession.

• Stated. A spirit can hold a person from childhood and work against him: the father says it has been with the boy “From childhood”, and “It often throws him into the fire or into the water, trying to kill him.” (Mark 9:21–22). It can blind and silence, and bind: “a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute” (Matthew 12:22); “a woman there had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years” (Luke 13:11), one “whom Satan has kept bound” (13:16). It can drive to violence and self-harm: “They were so violent that no one could pass that way.” (Matthew 8:28); “cutting himself with stones” (Mark 5:5); “the man with the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all” (Acts 19:16). The texts list possession beside illness, and at times join them: “the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed—and He healed them” (Matthew 4:24); of one boy, “He has seizures”, and “Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy” (17:15, 18).
• The person and the spirit. In the exorcisms Jesus rebukes the spirit, not the possessed: “Be silent!” … “Come out of him!” (Mark 1:25); “I command you to come out and never enter him again.” (9:25). Where Satan speaks through one who is not possessed, he rebukes the man: he “rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’” (Mark 8:33). Afterward the freed man is “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” (5:15), and is sent to tell “what mercy He has shown you” (5:19). Peter calls the work “healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).
• Where Satan enters one who consents. “the devil had already put into the heart of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus” (John 13:2), a man who “was a thief” (12:6). “Satan entered Judas Iscariot”, who then “went to discuss with the chief priests” and “consented” (Luke 22:3–4, 6), and he is judged: “woe to that man who betrays Him” (22:22). To Ananias: “how is it that Satan has filled your heart”, and “How could you conceive such a deed in your heart?” (Acts 5:3–4). Of David: “Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” (1 Chronicles 21:1; step 10), and David says, “I have sinned greatly because I have done this thing.” (21:8).
• Measured. Luke uses one verb for both kinds of entering: εἰσῆλθεν δαιμόνια πολλὰ εἰς αὐτόν, ‘many demons had entered him’ (8:30), and Εἰσῆλθεν δὲ Σατανᾶς εἰς Ἰούδαν, ‘Satan entered Judas’ (22:3). The entering is told alike; the consent differs.
• Saul. Rejected for disobedience, “He has rejected you as king” (1 Samuel 15:23), and jealous “from that day forward” (18:9), Saul hurled his spear when “a spirit of distress sent from God came upon Saul” (18:10–11; 19:9–10), and later said, “I have sinned.” (26:21): afflicted and consenting at once, and held to account.
• Inference. In the Gospels and Acts the possessed are sufferers whom the Son sets free; and in all the texts guilt follows consent: where Satan enters, fills or incites one who consents, the deed is his. Strong: no exorcism account of the Gospels and Acts charges the possessed; both whom Satan is said to enter or fill, Judas and Ananias, are held guilty; David, whom Satan “incited”, confesses; and Saul, afflicted by a spirit, answers for what he chose.

How possession comes.

• Stated. None of the accounts of particular people freed in the Gospels and Acts gives a cause (Mark 1:23–28; 5:1–20; 7:24–30; 9:14–29; Matthew 9:32–34; 12:22; Luke 8:2; 13:10–17; Acts 16:16–18; 19:13–16); one gives the onset, “From childhood” (Mark 9:21). The one account that names a cause is Saul’s: “After the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, a spirit of distress from the LORD began to torment him.” (1 Samuel 16:14). One saying tells of a spirit’s return to a house left “vacant, swept clean, and put in order”, with “seven other spirits more wicked than itself”, which Matthew turns on a whole people: “So will it be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:44–45; Luke 11:24–26). The law forbids the practices that seek the spirits: one who “practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery, casts spells, consults a medium or spiritist, or inquires of the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:10–11); “A man or a woman who is a medium or spiritist must surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:27), in Hebrew one in whom there is an ʾôb, the BSB’s “medium”. And Paul forbids the table of idols: “I do not want you to be participants with demons.” (1 Corinthians 10:20).
• Stated (Josephus). An early reader takes Saul’s torment for demons: “some strange and demoniacal disorders came upon him” (Antiquities 6.166, tr. Whiston).
• Inference. The texts give no general account of how possession happens: they give God’s sending, after his Spirit withdraws (Saul), and a saying of a spirit’s return to a house left empty, which Matthew turns on a generation (Matthew 12:44–45). That divination or the idols’ table opens a person to possession is a reading: the texts forbid both and tell of no one possessed through them. The slave girl’s divination came from her spirit (Acts 16:16), not the spirit from her divination.

Possession or illness?

• Stated: the texts tell them apart. “people brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering acute pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed—and He healed them” (Matthew 4:24); “He healed many who were ill with various diseases and drove out many demons” (Mark 1:34). The same affliction is healed both ways. A man “who was deaf and hardly able to speak” is healed with a touch and a word, “Ephphatha!”, and no demon is named (Mark 7:32–35); of “a demon-possessed man who was mute”, “when the demon had been driven out, the man began to speak” (Matthew 9:32–33). In one boy the two meet: “He has seizures and is suffering terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.” (17:15), and “Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment” (17:18).
• Measured. Matthew 4:24 lists δαιμονιζομένους καὶ σεληνιαζομένους, ‘the demon-possessed and the moonstruck’, side by side. σεληνιάζομαι, the word for seizures, stands only there and at Matthew 17:15, the boy whose demon Jesus rebukes: the one person whose seizures the texts name is a possessed boy.
• The case, in its ancient form. Hippocrates, about 400 BC, of epilepsy, “the disease called Sacred”: it is “nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause” (On the Sacred Disease, tr. Francis Adams).
• Measured by others. The International League Against Epilepsy: “An epileptic seizure is a transient occurrence of signs and/or symptoms due to abnormal excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain.” The World Health Organization’s classification names a disorder of possession (ICD-11, 6B63): “Possession trance disorder is characterised by trance states in which there is a marked alteration in the individual’s state of consciousness and the individual’s customary sense of personal identity is replaced by an external ‘possessing’ identity and in which the individual’s behaviours or movements are experienced as being controlled by the possessing agent.” It applies only where “The possession trance state is involuntary and unwanted and is not accepted as a part of a collective cultural or religious practice.” And belief in possession is widespread: across “488 cultures worldwide, Erika Bourguignon uncovered that 360 societies (74 percent) maintain beliefs in spirit possession” (David Bradnick, 2022, on her survey of 1973).
• Background (a newsletter of the U.S. Catholic bishops, on the rite of exorcism). As part of the evaluation, “the afflicted member of the faithful should avail himself/herself of a thorough medical and psychological/psychiatric evaluation”, and the exorcist must keep a balance “between not believing too easily that the devil is responsible for what is manifesting, and attributing all possible manifestations solely to a natural, organic source” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Secretariat of Divine Worship, Newsletter, December 2014).
• Inference. The texts do not make every illness a demon: they name the sick, the possessed and those with seizures apart (Matthew 4:24; Mark 1:34), and they heal muteness with and without a demon (Mark 7:32–35; Matthew 9:32–33). Nor do they make every possession an illness: the spirits speak and know the Son, “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). Stated. They tell the two apart as kinds, not by their signs: one sign comes with a spirit and without one, and the one sufferer whose seizures they name was possessed (Matthew 17:15, 18); so they give no sign by which to tell a case today. Stated. The charge has its strongest case in that boy, with the signs of epilepsy: “He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid.” (Mark 9:18). The texts give the cause as a spirit, which Jesus addressed and which left him (9:25–26); medicine gives seizures with these signs a cause in the brain. So here the texts and medicine part: follows, from the texts’ words and medicine’s finding. That the two causes are one, the spirit working through the brain’s own events, would remove the parting; but the texts give possession no mechanism (How possession comes), and no instrument can find a spirit: not shown. With a literal timeline of Genesis 1–11 (Before Adam), this is the second place where the texts and the sciences part.
• Inference. The Gerasene bears the marks the diagnosis names: another identity speaks, “My name is Legion” (Mark 5:9), and the man, “cutting himself with stones” (5:5), was “driven by the demon into solitary places” (Luke 8:29). There too the texts name spirits where psychiatry names a disorder, and the two part as they do over the seizures: follows. What the texts add is the spirits’ speech about the Son, “Jesus, Son of the Most High God” (Mark 5:7): stated. They do not set the physician against the one who drives out spirits: Jesus heals the sick and the possessed alike (Matthew 4:24) and says, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Matthew 9:12); and the bishops’ newsletter makes a medical and psychological evaluation part of the process. That the texts bid a family choose the one over the other: not supported.

The remedy.

• Stated. By a word: “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him!” (Mark 1:27); “He drove out the spirits with a word” (Matthew 8:16). By prayer: “This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.” (Mark 9:29). With a touch: “Then He placed His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and began to glorify God.” (Luke 13:13). At a distance, to another: “The demon has left your daughter.” (Mark 7:29). In the name: “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” (Acts 16:18). The authority is given: “Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits” (Matthew 10:1); “Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name.” (Luke 10:17), with a warning, “do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (10:20).
• Stated: the name is no spell. Seven sons of Sceva used it; the spirit answered, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”, and overpowered them (Acts 19:13–16). Yet it works for one the disciples tried to stop “because he does not accompany us”: “Do not stop him” (Mark 9:38–39); and some who say “in Your name drive out demons” will hear, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:22–23). For everyone: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7); “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
• Stated: prayer for the sick. “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up.” (James 5:14–15). Yet some whom the apostles knew stayed sick: “Trophimus I left sick in Miletus.” (2 Timothy 4:20); Epaphroditus “was sick indeed, nearly unto death” (Philippians 2:27); and Timothy had “frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23).
• Measured by others: trials of prayer. In 1,802 patients after heart bypass surgery, “intercessory prayer, whether known or unknown, was not associated with reduced complications through 30 days compared with no intercessory prayer”, and those told they would be prayed for “actually had a higher primary event rate” (58.6%; H. Benson and colleagues, American Heart Journal 151, 2006, as the American College of Cardiology summarizes it). A Cochrane review of ten studies with 7,646 patients: “These findings are equivocal” (Roberts, Ahmed and Davison, 2009).
• Inference. The trials tested prayer by strangers, assigned by lot; the texts’ promise is to the prayer of the elders whom the sick man calls, with anointing and confession (James 5:14–16), and they themselves tell of believers who stayed sick (2 Timothy 4:20; Philippians 2:27). That the trials refute the promise as the texts give it: not shown. That the texts promise healing to every prayer: not supported.
• Where readers differ: can one in whom the Spirit dwells be possessed? No text calls a believer possessed. Against: “the One who was born of God protects him, and the evil one cannot touch him” (1 John 5:18); “What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.” (2 Corinthians 6:16). Toward a hold short of possession: Satan “filled” the heart of Ananias, of the church (Acts 5:1–3); “if you receive a different spirit than the One you received” (2 Corinthians 11:4); “some have already turned aside to follow Satan” (1 Timothy 5:15); Paul’s “messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2 Corinthians 12:7); “do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:27). A reading.

The evil that people do.

• Stated. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.” (Matthew 15:19); “All these evils come from within” (Mark 7:23); “each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed” (James 1:14). Cain is warned, “sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7), and John says he “belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother”, “Because his own deeds were evil” (1 John 3:12). To those who sought his death Jesus says, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires.” (John 8:44). The devil deceives: “the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9); “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Yet “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:20), and “the dead were judged according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12).
• Stated: evils the texts name with the devil’s part. Satan “incited David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1); the devil put betrayal “into the heart of Judas” (John 13:2); “the devil is about to throw some of you into prison” (Revelation 2:10); “Satan obstructed us” (1 Thessalonians 2:18); “demonic spirits that perform signs and go out to all the kings of the earth, to assemble them for battle” (Revelation 16:14). And a wider field: “the whole world is under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19); “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).
• Inference. The texts do not explain human evil as possession: its source is the heart; the devil tempts, deceives, incites and holds captive; and the doer is judged and called to repent, “in the hope that God may grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25–26). Follows from the texts quoted. That the gods who “judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked” (Psalm 82:2; step 11) belong to this field rests on Joint 2: a reading. Which other evils of history the wider field lay behind, no text says; to name one is a reading.

For the sequence.

• Stated. “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Matthew 12:28); “how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.” (12:29); “when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted, and then he divides up his plunder” (Luke 11:22). The seventy-two report, “even the demons submit to us in Your name”, and he answers, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:17–18; step 15). At the end an angel “seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:2; step 17).
• Measured. δέω, ‘bind’, stands in forty New Testament verses. The strong man ‘tied up’, δήσῃ (Matthew 12:29), the dragon ‘bound’, ἔδησεν (Revelation 20:2), and the woman “whom Satan has kept bound”, ἣν ἔδησεν ὁ Σατανᾶς (Luke 13:16), share the verb; so does the Greek of Tobit 8:3, where the angel binds the demon, ἔδησεν αὐτὸ ὁ ἄγγελος.
• Inference. In Jesus’ own words, his driving out of demons by the Spirit of God is the kingdom come upon a house that Satan held (Matthew 12:28–29): the reclaiming of step 15, one person at a time. Follows, for the kingdom. That the binding of Matthew 12:29 is the binding of Revelation 20:2 is weak: one common verb, said of different times.

Texts around them on demons.

• Background (Mesopotamia). The Udug-hul incantations: “the large compendium of Mesopotamian exorcistic incantations known as Udug.hul (Utukku Lemnutu), directed against evil demons, ghosts, gods, and other demonic malefactors” (Markham J. Geller, Healing Magic and Evil Demons, 2016, publisher’s description). They “are attested among the very earliest of Mesopotamian incantations from the third millennium BCE down to the very latest cuneiform tablets with Greek transliterations”, “with the aim of removing disease-causing demons from the patient’s house, presence, or even body” (pp. 3–4). Lamashtu, on a plaque of 800–550 BCE (British Museum, BM 117759): “This lion-headed creature with the legs of a bird of prey and the body of a woman is a fallen goddess.” “She was thought to cause the death of infants and women in childbirth.” (as captioned by the French Ministry of Culture’s Orient cunéiforme). Against her stood “Pazuzu, the king of evil wind demons”: “While not a benevolent figure on his own, he could be used to deflect the dangerous attentions of Lamashtu, a powerful and violent demon.” (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pendant 1993.181, 8th–7th century BCE).
• Lilith. “Lilitu, the Mesopotamian succubus, is mentioned once in the Bible as Lilith” (Encyclopaedia Judaica). The verse is Isaiah 34:14, and lîlît stands only there in the Hebrew Bible; but the verse sets it among the desert creatures, “hyenas” and “wild goat”, the BSB has “the night creature”, and the Greek of that clause has ὀνοκένταυροι. That it is Lilitu is a reading.
• Stated (Tobit, Josephus). In Tobit, Raphael “was sent … to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit” (3:17), and Tobias, taught by him, drives the spirit off with smoke: “if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof before the man or the woman, and the party shall be no more vexed” (6:7); the spirit “fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him” (8:3, KJV Apocrypha). Josephus saw “a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian”, who with a ring “drew out the demon through his nostrils”, “making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed” (Antiquities 8.42–49, tr. Whiston); of Solomon he says, “God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men.” (8.45). Jesus names such exorcists himself: “by whom do your sons drive them out?” (Matthew 12:27).
• Background (Qumran). 11Q11 “is a collection of four songs, possibly intended to exorcise demons”, “a text from the first century C.E.” (Matthias Henze, TheTorah.com, 2020).
• Background (the Greek magical papyri). A Greek spell book has “A tested charm of Pibechis for those possessed by daimons:” “I conjure you by the god of the Hebrews, Jesus”, followed by a string of other names (PGM IV.3007–86, tr. W. C. Grese, in H. D. Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, 1986, p. 96, as Roger Pearse quotes it). Morton Smith: “A historian should ask what those who were not his followers thought about him.” “Evidence from the gospels and other sources shows they thought him a magician.” (New York Review of Books, 21 December 1978, in a letter on his Jesus the Magician).
• Background (Persia). Tobit’s demon bears a Persian name: “Outside the Iranian world, Aēšma occurs in the Talmud as ʾšmdʾy and in the Book of Tobit as Asmodaios”, “both from Av. aēšmō.daēva-.” (Jes P. Asmussen, Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Aēšma”), the name of wrath “as a distinct demon”.
• Inference. The world the texts addressed feared demons as bringers of disease and death, and fought them with spells, smoke, rings, amulets and rival demons. The texts share its picture of affliction (Matthew 12:22; Luke 13:11). They part from it on two points. The nations’ gods are demons, and the demons have one prince, not powers to be played against each other (Deuteronomy 32:17; Revelation 9:20; Matthew 12:26). And the means differ. Tobit and Josephus also give the power to God; but in the Gospels and Acts the spirits go out by a word, by prayer, at times with a touch, never by smoke, ring or amulet; the one case of objects, cloths that had touched Paul and were taken to the sick, so that “the diseases and evil spirits left them”, the text gives to God: “God did extraordinary miracles through the hands of Paul” (Acts 19:11–12). The law forbids one who “casts spells” (Deuteronomy 18:11), and at Ephesus “a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books and burned them” (Acts 19:19). The likeness Smith pressed lies in a question and a word: “What is your name?” (Mark 5:9), and, in a healing, spittle and an Aramaic word, which Mark translates, “‘Ephphatha!’ (which means, ‘Be opened!’)” (Mark 7:33–34): a plain command, not a name of power. Outsiders used his name (Mark 9:38; Acts 19:13), as the papyri later did, and there the texts part from the spell, for the name used as one works nothing: “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” (Acts 19:15). The one Persian name, Asmodeus, stands in Tobit, an early reader, and in no canonical text. David’s harp gave Saul relief, “the spirit of distress would depart from him” (1 Samuel 16:23), which the text does not call a driving out, and it did not last (18:10). Follows from the texts and witnesses quoted, as a comparison of means. That some of his own time charged him with the power of the prince of demons is stated (Matthew 12:24); that his means were a magician’s is not supported. Whether the texts drew on that world is not shown (Older tablets).

Demons and possession, in one sentence. In these texts demons are unclean spirits under the devil, acting within God’s limits, the gods behind the idols, who know the Son and fear their end; in the Gospels and Acts the possessed are sufferers whom he sets free, while in all the texts those who consent to evil bear its guilt, even when Satan enters, fills or incites them, both strong; possession has occasions but no stated mechanism; the texts tell possession and illness apart as kinds, not by signs, and where they name a spirit as the cause of a boy’s seizures, medicine names the brain, so that there the texts and the sciences part, which follows, unless the spirit works through the brain’s own events, which is not shown; trials of strangers’ prayer for the sick do not test the prayer the texts describe (not shown); and the evil that people do comes from the heart, with the devil as tempter and deceiver. Where demons come from is a reading.

The sequence ends with the nations reclaimed by the Son and shared with his people (steps 15–17). This section asks how a person comes to share in that: by grace or by works, by faith alone or not, with baptism or without, what becomes of those who never heard, whether it can be lost, how the death of one innocent man can answer for the guilty, what becomes of one who takes his own life, and what the sin is that will not be forgiven. Each answer is graded.

1. By grace.

• Stated. “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9). “He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy” (Titus 3:5). “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23–24). “And if it is by grace, then it is no longer by works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.” (11:6).
• Stated, in sum. Salvation is God’s gift, not a wage.

2. Through faith, with repentance.

• Stated. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). “that if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9). “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38); “But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:3); God “now commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).
• Stated, in sum. Faith in Christ and a turning from sin are both stated as the way in; neither is a work that earns (1).

3. Faith and works: Romans 3:28 and James 2:24.

• Stated. Paul: “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:28). James: “As you can see, a man is justified by his deeds and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24). Both quote the same verse: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:3; James 2:23; Genesis 15:6). James’s Abraham is justified by what he did “when he offered his son Isaac on the altar” (James 2:21), so that “his faith was working with his actions” (2:22); “So too, faith by itself, if it does not result in action, is dead.” (2:17). Paul too: “All that matters is faith, expressed through love.” (Galatians 5:6); “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10).
• Measured. The phrase ‘faith alone’ occurs once in the New Testament, at James 2:24: οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον, ‘not by faith alone’. Paul’s phrase is χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου, ‘apart from works of the law’ (Romans 3:28), and ‘works of the law’ stands in six verses, all in Romans and Galatians (Romans 3:20, 28; Galatians 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10). But the two meet head on in one clause about one man: Paul’s “If Abraham was indeed justified by works”, εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰμ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη (Romans 4:2), and James’s “Was not our father Abraham justified by what he did”, Ἀβραὰμ … οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη (James 2:21), in the same three words. And Paul’s denial is wider than the law’s works: “not by works” (Ephesians 2:9; Titus 3:5).
• Background: where the churches divided, and met. Luther judged that James “is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works” (Luther’s Works 35:396–397, as Derek Cooper quotes it, 2009). The Council of Trent: “If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.” (Session 6, Canon 9, 1547, tr. Waterworth); and it reads James of growth: the justified, “faith co-operating with good works, increase in that justice which they have received through the grace of Christ, and are still further justified”, citing “Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” (Session 6, chapter 10). In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church agreed: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works” (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 15).
• Inference. Paul grants Abraham no boast from works “before God”, for his faith was credited as righteousness (4:2–3); James says he was justified by what he did. Each verb is read in its own passage (R4). Paul’s is God’s crediting righteousness “to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the wicked” (4:5), at Genesis 15:6, before any work and before circumcision (4:10). James’s falls on the deed years later at Genesis 22, when “his faith was perfected by what he did” and “the Scripture was fulfilled” (2:22–23): James himself sets his verb after the crediting that Paul cites, so it is not that first crediting. Both join faith to its deeds (Galatians 5:6; James 2:22); and Paul’s own “it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous” (Romans 2:13) stands in an argument that ends, “no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law” (3:20). So the clash that Luther saw dissolves on the passages themselves, not on R2 alone: reconciled in the texts. What James’s verb then means is a reading on which the churches divide: that the standing is shown, “I will show you my faith by my deeds” (2:18), or that it grows, as Trent reads it; each keeps both texts.

4. Baptism.

• Stated. “Repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38); “this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21); “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4); and in the longer ending of Mark, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16; on that ending, Skeptics’ questions, 19). Yet the thief who said “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” was told, “today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42–43), with no baptism told; and at Cornelius’s house “the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard” before the water, “They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have!” (Acts 10:44, 47).
• Inference. Baptism is commanded with repentance and said to save, as “the pledge of a clear conscience toward God”, not as a washing of the body (1 Peter 3:21), though it is also called a washing, “be baptized, and wash your sins away” (Acts 22:16; Titus 3:5). Whether it is necessary in every case, or the normal sign that God can go before, is a reading, and the churches divide on it.

5. Those who never heard.

• Stated. “Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12); “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), who “wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2:4). Of Gentiles without the law: “So they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness”, “on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:15–16). “Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30). God “welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right” (10:35). Judgment follows knowledge: “the one who unknowingly does things worthy of punishment will be beaten with few blows” (Luke 12:48). “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” (Genesis 18:25). “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead” (1 Peter 4:6). And the charge that follows: “How then can they call on the One in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14).
• Background: two answers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.” (847). The Lausanne Covenant of 1974: “We recognize that everyone has some knowledge of God through his general revelation in nature. But we deny that this can save, for people suppress the truth by their unrighteousness.” (section 3).
• Inference. The texts state that salvation is through Christ alone (Acts 4:12; 1 Timothy 2:5), that God wills all to be saved (2:4), that judgment follows knowledge (Luke 12:47–48; Romans 2:14–16), and that the Judge of all the earth does right (Genesis 18:25). Whether one who never heard can be saved through Christ without knowing his name, they do not say; the churches answer differently (the Catechism and Lausanne). A reading. What they do state is the command: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and its reason (Romans 10:14).

6. Can it be lost?

• Stated: the keeping. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.” (John 10:28); nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).
• Stated: the warnings. “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit”, “and then have fallen away—to be restored to repentance” (Hebrews 6:4–6); “you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4); “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21). And of some who left: “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us.” (1 John 2:19).
• Inference. The texts state both the Son’s keeping and the warnings. They agree if the warnings are among the means by which the kept are kept, or if those who fall away were never kept (1 John 2:19). Or the warnings mean what they say of real believers, who “shared in the Holy Spirit” and then fell away (Hebrews 6:4–6), while John 10:28 bars any snatching, not a leaving. Each keeps both sets of texts; which holds is a reading, and the churches divide on it.

7. The innocent for the guilty.

• The attack. The Law forbids what the cross is said to do: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” (Deuteronomy 24:16); “The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will not bear the iniquity of his father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of his son.” (Ezekiel 18:20); “Acquitting the guilty and condemning the righteous— both are detestable to the LORD.” (Proverbs 17:15); and God says, “I will not acquit the guilty.” (Exodus 23:7). Yet Paul’s God is the one “who justifies the wicked” (Romans 4:5). A just God punishes the one who broke the law, not an innocent man; a merciful one forgives without punishing anyone, as the father in Jesus’ parable “ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20) and asked for no payment.
• Stated. “He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him”, “and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6); “it was the LORD’s will to crush Him”, and “His soul is made a guilt offering” (53:10); “My righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities” (53:11). The Son of Man came “to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), “the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (3:18); “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21); “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13); God “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Paul puts the attack’s question himself: God presented him as an atoning sacrifice “in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand”, “so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25–26). “According to the law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:22). He is “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2), received “through faith in His blood” (Romans 3:25); “whoever does not believe has already been condemned” (John 3:18).
• Stated: the attack’s two premises. The attack takes the one who suffers to be an unwilling third party, and forgiveness to cost the forgiver nothing. The texts say otherwise on both. He gives himself: “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” (John 10:18); “who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). It is God who acts in him: “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19); “the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). And the guilty share his death: “One died for all, therefore all died” (2 Corinthians 5:14); “our old self was crucified with Him” (Romans 6:3–6); “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20); “through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:12–19). In Jesus’ parables the one who forgives bears the debt: the master “forgave his debt, and released him”, a debt of “ten thousand talents” (Matthew 18:24–27); the moneylender “forgave both of them” (Luke 7:42). At the cross God canceled “the debt ascribed to us”, “nailing it to the cross!” (Colossians 2:14). The Law, too, lays the iniquity of others on a bearer God appoints: “The goat will carry on itself all their iniquities” (Leviticus 16:22); the sin offering was given to the priests “to take away the guilt of the congregation” (10:17); and Ezekiel, at God’s word, was “to bear their iniquity” (Ezekiel 4:4–6), in the book whose 18:20 the attack quotes. Before the cross God forgave, “forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin” (Exodus 34:7; Psalm 32:5); these are the sins he “had passed over” (Romans 3:25).
• Measured. Mark’s ‘ransom for many’ is λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν (Mark 10:45; Matthew 20:28). ἀντί stands in twenty verses of the New Testament; at Matthew 2:22 Archelaus reigns “in place of his father Herod”. In “the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Peter 3:18) and “on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21) the preposition is ὑπέρ. Peter’s ‘bore’, ἀνήνεγκεν, is the verb of the Septuagint’s Isaiah 53:12, αὐτὸς ἁμαρτίας πολλῶν ἀνήνεγκεν, ‘he bore the sins of many’. Paul’s ‘atoning sacrifice’ is ἱλαστήριον, at its only other New Testament place the “mercy seat” (Hebrews 9:5); in sixteen of its twenty-one Septuagint verses it renders kappōret, the cover of the ark, on which the blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14–15), and at 4 Maccabees 17:22 it is the martyrs’ death. Isaiah 53:10’s ‘guilt offering’ is ʾāšām, the offering of Leviticus 5–7: 23 of its 41 verses are in Leviticus. The ‘punishment’ of 53:5 is mûsār, which stands in fifty verses, thirty of them in Proverbs, as in “the discipline of the LORD” (Proverbs 3:11). Isaiah 53:11’s ‘will justify’ is yaṣdîq, the verb of God’s “I will not acquit” (lōʾ ʾaṣdîq, Exodus 23:7) and of “Acquitting the guilty” (maṣdîq rāšāʿ, Proverbs 17:15). The Greek of Romans 4:5, τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ, ‘who justifies the ungodly’, stands in the Septuagint of the books the BSB prints only where it is condemned, at Exodus 23:7 and Isaiah 5:23, each with ἕνεκεν δώρων, ‘for gifts’; and the righteous one’s own “vindicated” (1 Timothy 3:16) is ἐδικαιώθη, the same verb. Acts 20:28 reads διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου, ‘through the blood of his own’: τοῦ ἰδίου may qualify the blood, as the BSB takes it, or stand alone, as οἱ ἴδιοι, ‘his own’, stands at John 1:11; and the SBLGNT marks a variant at θεοῦ. 2 Corinthians 5:19 needs neither. One Hebrew phrase, nāśāʾ ʿāwōn, ‘lift’ or ‘bear iniquity’, serves for God’s forgiving (Exodus 34:7; Micah 7:18; Psalm 32:5), for the sinner’s own penalty, “shall bear his punishment” (Leviticus 5:17), and for one who bears others’ (Leviticus 10:17; Ezekiel 4:4–6); it is the phrase Ezekiel 18:19–20 denies to the son. A shared phrase proves little.
• Stated (Athanasius, Augustine). Athanasius put the attack’s last question, “what possible course was God to take? To demand repentance of men for their transgression?”, and answered, “Now, if there were merely a misdemeanour in question, and not a consequent corruption, repentance were well enough.” So the Word took a body and “gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father”, “all being held to have died in Him” (On the Incarnation 7.2, 7.4, 8.4). Augustine: “Christ, though guiltless, took our punishment, that He might cancel our guilt, and do away with our punishment.” (Reply to Faustus 14.4). He asked, “Was it indeed so, that when God the Father was wroth with us, He saw the death of His Son for us, and was appeased towards us?”, and answered, “But I see that the Father loved us also before”, for “together both the Father and the Son, and the Spirit of both, work all things equally and harmoniously” (On the Trinity 13.11.15). The devil was to be “conquered, not by power, but by righteousness” (13.13.17), and the Lord came “that God might show His love in us, commending it powerfully” (On the Catechising of the Uninstructed 4.7).
• Stated (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus). Gregory of Nyssa held that justice barred a rescue by force, and so the price went to the captor, “to make over to the master of the slave whatever ransom he may agree to accept” (The Great Catechism 22). Gregory of Nazianzus asked, “To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was It shed?” To the devil, “If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage!”; to the Father, “Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him”; it was done “that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son” (Oration 45.22).
• Background (Anselm, Aquinas). Anselm: “Si peccatum sic dimittitur impunitum, similiter erit apud Deum peccanti et non peccanti, quod Deo non convenit”, ‘if sin is so let go unpunished, it will be alike with God for the one who sins and the one who does not, which does not befit God’ (Cur Deus Homo 1.12, as a note to Athanasius 7.1 in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers quotes it). Aquinas held otherwise: “if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice”, since in forgiving a fault against himself God “wrongs no one” (Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 2, reply 3). He set down the attack’s objection, that “to make the atonement devolves on him who commits the sin”, and answered, “The head and members are as one mystic person; and therefore Christ's satisfaction belongs to all the faithful as being His members.” His definition: “He properly atones for an offense who offers something which the offended one loves equally, or even more than he detested the offense.” (III, q. 48, a. 2). And by the Passion “man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return” (q. 46, a. 3).
• Inference: the attack. Ezekiel’s rule is for the son who has himself “done what is just and right” (18:19), judged “each according to his ways” (18:30), and Deuteronomy’s is a law for Israel’s courts, as a king applies it (24:16; 2 Kings 14:6). The same books lay others’ iniquity on a bearer God appoints, the goat, the priests and the prophet himself (Leviticus 16:22; 10:17; Ezekiel 4:4–6), and Isaiah’s servant bears it by the LORD’s will and his own (Isaiah 53:10, 12; John 10:18). So Ezekiel 18:20 and Isaiah 53 stand together, as Ezekiel 4 and 18 stand in one book: reconciled in the texts. On Paul’s terms the soul who sins still dies, for in the one “all died” (2 Corinthians 5:14; Romans 6:6): stated. Proverbs 17:15 condemns two acts. Against the first, Isaiah 53:11 joins the acquittal, in the same verb, to the iniquities borne, and Paul names the clash and gives its answer, “so as to be just and to justify” (Romans 3:26); against the second, God “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3), and the righteous one was “vindicated” (1 Timothy 3:16) and “raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Reconciled in the texts. Of mercy: in the texts the forgiver forgives freely and bears the debt himself (Matthew 18:27; Luke 7:42; Colossians 2:14), and in Christ the forgiver is God (2 Corinthians 5:19); that the parables show a forgiveness that costs the forgiver nothing: not shown. Whether God could have forgiven without the cross, the texts do not say: its “necessary” is said of what the prophets wrote (Luke 24:25–26), “fitting” (Hebrews 2:10) is not ‘the only way’, and the prayer “if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Matthew 26:39) was answered with the cup. Anselm and Aquinas divide on it: a reading.
• Inference: the readings. Four readings explain how the death saves, and each takes up something the texts state. Substitution: that he bore their sins in their place, by the LORD’s will and his own, is stated (Isaiah 53:6, 10–12; Mark 10:45; 1 Peter 2:24); that the bearing was the Law’s penalty rests on “becoming a curse for us” under “the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:10, 13), on Romans 8:3 and on the Law’s idiom (Leviticus 5:17), against a live rival, that he bore it as the offering bears it away (Leviticus 16:22; Isaiah 53:10; Romans 8:3’s “as an offering for sin”), with Isaiah’s mûsār a word for discipline: moderate. Its harsh form, a Son who wins over a hostile Father, is ruled out: the Father gives the Son because he loves (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 8:32; 1 John 4:10), as Augustine answered. Satisfaction, that his obedience repaid the honor sin took (Anselm; Aquinas), joins three stated things, sin as dishonor, “do you dishonor God by breaking the law?” (Romans 2:23), the obedience of the one for the many (5:19), and God glorified in the Son as the passion begins (John 13:31), by a link no text states, that the death repays the honor: a reading. Victory over the powers is stated: “having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15); “so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14–15; 1 John 3:8). It is the sequence’s own step 15. That the ransom was paid to the devil (Gregory of Nyssa): no evidence. No text names one to whom a ransom is paid, and the offering is made “to God” (Hebrews 9:14; Ephesians 5:2), who, as Gregory of Nazianzus put it, accepts it without demanding it. Love shown and example (Augustine; Aquinas) are stated: “God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8); “leaving you an example” (1 Peter 2:21). That they are the whole is ruled out: three verses later “He Himself bore our sins in His body” (2:24), and John’s love “sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). The texts set these side by side: debt canceled and powers disarmed in one sentence (Colossians 2:13–15), example and bearing in one passage (1 Peter 2:21–24), love and atoning sacrifice in one verse (1 John 4:10). That the cross is at once a bearing of sins, a debt canceled, a victory over the powers and a love shown: follows, from the texts quoted. Which of them is central is a reading, and the churches divide on it.

8. One who takes his own life.

• Stated. The texts tell of those who took their own lives, and judge none of them for the manner of his death: Saul “took his own sword and fell on it” (1 Samuel 31:4); Ahithophel “put his affairs in order and hanged himself” (2 Samuel 17:23); Zimri burned the palace “down upon himself” (1 Kings 16:18); Judas “went away and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5). Samson died by his own act against the Philistines, praying, “Let me die with the Philistines.” (Judges 16:30), and Hebrews names him among the faithful (11:32). When the jailer at Philippi “drew his sword and was about to kill himself”, Paul cried, “Do not harm yourself! We are all here!” (Acts 16:27–28). To Elijah, who prayed, “Take my life”, an angel said, “Get up and eat.” (1 Kings 19:4–5).
• Background (Catholic). The Catechism of the Catholic Church: “we should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.” “By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance.” (2283, as the Catholic Times of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois quotes it).
• Inference. The texts meet the one about to kill himself with “Do not harm yourself!” (Acts 16:28) and the one who asks to die with bread and water (1 Kings 19:5–6). Whether one who takes his own life can be saved, no text says: Judas’s end is spoken of for his betrayal, “woe to that man who betrays Him” (Luke 22:22), not for his death, and the one sin the texts call unforgivable is another (9). Open.

9. The sin that will not be forgiven.

• Stated. “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31); “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of eternal sin.” “Jesus made this statement because they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” (Mark 3:29–30). John: “There is a sin that leads to death; I am not saying he should ask regarding that sin.” (1 John 5:16). And the promise: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).
• Inference. Mark names the occasion: the charge that the Spirit’s work in Jesus was an unclean spirit’s (3:30), the charge of Matthew 12:24 (Demons and possession, What they are). That the sin is that charge: follows, from Mark 3:30. Whether it can be committed now, and whether John’s “sin that leads to death” is the same sin, are readings. That anyone who confesses is forgiven is stated (1 John 1:9); so, on R2, the blasphemy that is never forgiven is one that never comes to confession, and one who fears it and confesses has the promise: follows.

For the sequence. Step 9’s promise, “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), is the gospel by Paul’s reading: “The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’” (Galatians 3:8). Paul’s own sending to the Gentiles is “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). So faith is the way the nations, once paired with and ruled by other powers (step 8), come back to God (steps 15 and 17). Moderate, on Joint 1’s rule.

In one sentence. Salvation is by grace, through faith in Christ, with repentance, shown in deeds and marked by baptism; Paul and James do not contradict each other when each verb is read in its own passage, which is reconciled in the texts, and whether James’s “justified” means the standing shown or the standing grown is a reading; Christ bore the sins of others by his own will and God’s, which is stated, and the charge that this punishes the innocent and acquits the guilty is reconciled in the texts; that the bearing was the Law’s penalty is moderate, satisfaction is a reading, and victory over the powers and love shown are stated, none of them the whole; whether God could have forgiven without the cross is a reading; whether those who never heard are saved through Christ without knowing him, whether baptism is necessary in every case, and whether it can be lost are readings on which the churches divide; whether one who takes his own life can be saved, no text says (open); the sin that will not be forgiven is the charge that the Spirit’s work is an unclean spirit’s, which follows, and no one who confesses stays unforgiven; and faith is how the nations, once ruled by the powers, are reclaimed: moderate, on Joint 1’s rule.

The Law of Moses was given to Israel at Sinai; the New Testament says that a new covenant has come in Christ. Which of the Law’s commands bind those who follow him? The texts sort them themselves, and later readers gave the kinds their names. This section sets out what is restated, what is fulfilled, and what of the Law’s penalties remains, weighs the Law’s own word ‘forever’, and takes up three laws that readers ask about: divorce, tattoos and the tithe.

1. A new covenant, foretold and made.

• Stated. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” “It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers”; “I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31:31–33). At the supper: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20). “By speaking of a new covenant, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.” (Hebrews 8:13).
• Stated: fulfilled, not abolished. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17–18); “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John.” “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.” (Luke 16:16–17). Paul: “For Christ is the end of the law, to bring righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:4); “So the law became our guardian to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” (Galatians 3:24–25); “you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Yet “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good” (7:12); “Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Certainly not! Instead, we uphold the law.” (3:31); and Paul is “not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21).
• Measured. Romans 10:4’s ‘end’ is τέλος, which can mean the end of a thing or the goal it aims at.
• Stated: the Law’s own ‘forever’. “The Israelites must keep the Sabbath, celebrating it as a permanent covenant for the generations to come. It is a sign between Me and the Israelites forever” (Exodus 31:16–17). Passover and Unleavened Bread are “a permanent statute for the generations to come” (Exodus 12:14, 17), the Day of Atonement “a permanent statute” (Leviticus 16:29, 31, 34), circumcision “an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:13), and the priesthood “a permanent priesthood throughout their generations” (Exodus 40:15; Numbers 25:13). “You must not add to or subtract from what I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32).
• Stated: the prophets’ future. “From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come to worship before Me” (Isaiah 66:22–23); the nations go up “to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles” (Zechariah 14:16); under “My servant David” Israel “will follow My ordinances and keep and observe My statutes” (Ezekiel 37:24); and the prince “will provide the sin offerings” (Ezekiel 45:17). The Law foretells another prophet: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15), whom Peter names as Jesus (Acts 3:22). And the New Testament says the rules of food, drink and washing were “imposed until the time of reform” (Hebrews 9:10), and of the city at the end, “I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” (Revelation 21:22).
• Background (Jewish). Maimonides, of the prophet to be rejected: “if he says that the mitzvot commanded to the Jews are not forever, but rather were given for a limited time, he is a false prophet.” (Mishneh Torah, Yesodei haTorah 9:1, tr. Eliyahu Touger).
• Measured. Matthew 5:18 sets two limits, each with ἕως ἄν, ‘until’: ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, ‘until heaven and earth pass away’, and ἕως ἂν πάντα γένηται, ‘until everything happens’, the words Matthew uses again of the events of 24:34, ἕως ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται; and there Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away” (24:35). The Hebrew ʿôlām, ‘forever’, stands in 413 verses, and lĕʿōlām, the “forever” of Exodus 31:17, in 179; in Exodus 21:6 the BSB renders lĕʿōlām “for life”, of a slave’s service, and ʿôlām “for life” in Deuteronomy 15:17.
• Inference. The Law is not destroyed but fulfilled (Matthew 5:17), and those in Christ are not under it as their covenant (Romans 6:14; Galatians 3:25) but under “the law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21). Matthew 5:18–19 holds the hardest line: not a jot leaves the Law “until heaven and earth pass away”, and “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven”. On the rival reading, Jesus keeps the whole Law in force for his followers until the end; the council relieves only Gentiles of it (Acts 15:28–29), and Jewish believers keep it, as the church at Jerusalem did (Acts 21:20–24). On the reading taken here, no stroke leaves the Law as written, for all of it is fulfilled in him, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses” (Luke 24:44); what passes is its rule as the covenant’s terms, as Hebrews says of sacrifice and of rules “imposed until the time of reform” (Hebrews 8:13; 9:10; 3, below), and Peter, a Jew, lived “like a Gentile and not like a Jew” (Galatians 2:14). The texts give both sides, the letters on this one and Acts 21:20–24 on the other: a reading.
• Inference. The Law calls its feasts, its Sabbath, its priesthood and circumcision ʿôlām, ‘forever’, and forbids adding to it or taking from it. Read under R2, the texts agree if ʿôlām, which can mean a lifetime (Exodus 21:6), is bounded here by the end the Law itself foretells: a prophet like Moses, “You must listen to him” (Deuteronomy 18:15), and a new covenant of which the LORD says, “It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers” (Jeremiah 31:32). The rabbis read ʿôlām at its widest and hold false any prophet who shortens it, as Maimonides states; the two readings part on that one word: a reading. Whatever ʿôlām means, the Sabbath is a sign “between Me and the Israelites”, never laid on the nations, and Gentile believers are told to let no one judge them by it (Colossians 2:16–17): that it does not bind them follows. Whether its ‘forever’ still binds Jewish believers is a reading, as the customs are (3). That the prophets’ future, with its Sabbaths, its feast and its sin offerings, pictures the end in Israel’s own forms, which Revelation shows without a temple (21:22), rather than a return of the rites after “an offering for sin is no longer needed” (Hebrews 10:18), is a reading, on R2.

2. What the New Testament commands again.

• Stated. Nine of the Ten Commandments are given again in the New Testament’s own words. One God: “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” (Matthew 4:10). No idols: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:21). The name: “hallowed be Your name” (Matthew 6:9), and the oath sworn falsely “by My name” (Leviticus 19:12) becomes “But I tell you not to swear at all” (Matthew 5:34; James 5:12). Parents: “Honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:2). The rest: “The commandments ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and any other commandments, are summed up in this one decree: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Romans 13:9), with “do not bear false witness” (Matthew 19:18). And Jesus deepens them: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Do not murder’”, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” (Matthew 5:21–22).
• Stated: the Sabbath. The fourth is not commanded again. “Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:16–17); “One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5). Yet “There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” (Hebrews 4:9), and “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28).
• Inference. The moral commands are restated and deepened: follows. The Sabbath day is called a shadow whose substance is Christ, and its rest remains: stated. That it does not bind Gentile believers follows, and whether its ‘forever’ binds Jewish believers is a reading (1). Whether Christians keep a weekly day of rest as a command or as a gift is a reading.

3. What is fulfilled, and set aside.

• Sacrifice and priesthood. “For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed as well.” (Hebrews 7:12); “For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves.” (10:1); “But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.” (10:12); “an offering for sin is no longer needed” (10:18).
• Food. The dispute in Mark 7 was over eating “with hands that were defiled—that is, unwashed” (Mark 7:2, 5), and Jesus answered, “Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him” (7:15, 18); the BSB ends 7:19 with “(Thus all foods are clean.)”. Matthew’s parallel ends, “eating with unwashed hands does not defile him” (Matthew 15:20). Years later Peter could still say, “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” and was told, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:14–15), a vision he applies to people: “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” (10:28). Paul: “All food is clean” (Romans 14:20); “let no one judge you by what you eat or drink” (Colossians 2:16). The Law had forbidden “everything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales” (Leviticus 11:10).
• Measured. Mark 7:19 has no sentence ‘Thus all foods are clean’: its Greek ends καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα, ‘cleansing all foods’, a participle at which the SBL text marks a variant. Its form is masculine and nominative, as the speaker of 7:18 is, which is why the BSB reads it as Mark’s comment on what Jesus said; the text behind the KJV reads it of the body’s working, “goeth out into the draught, purging all meats” (KJV).
• Circumcision. “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commandments is what counts.” (1 Corinthians 7:19); to Gentiles seeking to be justified by it: “if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all” (Galatians 5:2).
• The council at Jerusalem. Peter: “why do you test God by placing on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10). The ruling for Gentile believers: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond these essential requirements: You must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.” (15:28–29). Jewish believers in Jerusalem, “all of them are zealous for the law” (21:20), and Paul himself goes to the temple so that all may see “that you also live in obedience to the law” (21:24).
• Inference. What foreshadowed Christ, sacrifice, priesthood, the laws of clean and unclean food, the feasts and circumcision as the sign of the covenant, is fulfilled in him and is not laid on Gentile believers: stated (Hebrews 10:1, 18; Romans 14:20; Colossians 2:16–17; Acts 15:28–29); the council’s rules on blood and strangled meat come from Leviticus 17, not 11 (5). That Mark’s participle makes Jesus’ saying a ruling on all foods is moderate: its masculine form joins it to the speaker, and the saying reaches past hands to whatever “enters a man from the outside”; but Matthew’s parallel stops at unwashed hands, and Peter’s answer in Acts 10:14 shows that it was not so taken at once. Whether Jewish believers may keep the customs, or should, is a reading: Acts 21:20–24 shows them kept in the church at Jerusalem, and Galatians 2:14 shows Peter living “like a Gentile”.

4. The Law’s penalties, the church and the state.

• Stated. Of the one put to death on two or three witnesses, the Law says, “So you must purge the evil from among you.” (Deuteronomy 17:7). Paul quotes those words for the church, and the sentence is expulsion: “God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you.’” (1 Corinthians 5:13). To the men about to stone a woman taken in adultery: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” and to her, “Then neither do I condemn you”, and “Now go and sin no more.” (John 8:7, 11; on the place of this passage in the manuscripts, Skeptics’ questions, 19). The sword is the governing authority’s: “he does not carry the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4).
• Inference. The church’s penalty is exclusion, not death (1 Corinthians 5:13), and the sword is the governing authority’s (Romans 13:4): stated. That Israel’s civil penalties bound Israel’s commonwealth, and pass with it, is a reading.

5. The kinds of law, as later readers named them.

• Background (Christian). Justin, about 160: “For the law promulgated on Horeb is now old, and belongs to yourselves alone; but this is for all universally.” (Dialogue 11). Aquinas: “Proportionately, therefore, the ceremonies of the first-mentioned state which foreshadowed the second and third states, had need to cease at the advent of the second state” (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 103, a. 3). The Westminster Confession (1646): “All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the New Testament.” The judicial laws “expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” “The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof” (19.3–5).
• Background (Jewish). The Talmud gives the Gentiles seven laws, where Israel keeps the whole Torah: “The descendants of Noah,” “were commanded” “seven mitzvot:” to set up courts of justice, and not to curse God’s name, serve idols, commit forbidden sexual relations, shed blood, rob, or eat a limb from a living animal (Sanhedrin 56a, William Davidson edition).
• Inference. The council’s four rules for Gentiles (Acts 15:29) overlap the Talmud’s seven at idolatry and forbidden sexual relations. Its “blood”, beside “the meat of strangled animals”, is blood eaten, where the Talmud’s is blood shed, murder: strong, on the text the BSB follows. Leviticus 17–18 gives four rules, in the council’s order, to “any foreigner living among them” as well as to Israel: offerings brought anywhere but to the LORD, after the “goat demons” (17:7–9); blood eaten (17:10–12); the blood of game left undrained (17:13); and the sexual laws, binding “the foreigner who lives among you” (18:26). That the council had either list in mind is a reading, since Acts cites neither. The Western text reads the decree otherwise: Codex Bezae, “with a range of patristic support, does not include the requirement for abstention from πνικτός”, ‘what is strangled’ (15:20), and gives the Golden Rule in a negative form (Josep Rius-Camps and Jenny Read-Heimerdinger, Filología Neotestamentaria 23, 2010, p. 188); and Tertullian, quoting the decree as “from sacrifices, and from fornications, and from blood”, takes its blood as “much more upon human blood” (On Modesty 12). On that text the decree forbids idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed, three of the Talmud’s seven: a reading of the Western form, not of the text read here.

6. Why the ban on shellfish but not the sexual commands?

• The question. If Christians set aside Leviticus 11, why keep Leviticus 18, “You must not lie with a man as with a woman” (18:22)?
• The texts’ answer. The New Testament itself makes the cut. It declares the foods clean, “All food is clean” (Romans 14:20; Colossians 2:16–17; and, on its participle, Mark 7:19), and it restates the sexual commands for Gentile believers (Acts 15:29) and in its own lists (1 Corinthians 6:9–11; Romans 1:26–27; Skeptics’ questions, 25). The line between Leviticus 11 and Leviticus 18:22 is drawn by the texts, not chosen later for convenience: stated.
• Where the line runs through Leviticus 18. From that chapter the New Testament names again the union with a father’s wife, “A man has his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1; Leviticus 18:8), adultery (Romans 13:9; Leviticus 18:20) and intercourse between men, “Men committed indecent acts with other men” (Romans 1:27; Leviticus 18:22). It does not name 18:19, “You must not approach a woman to have sexual relations with her during her menstrual period.”, though that command stands under the same “abominations”, binding “the foreigner who lives among you” (18:26–29), and though Leviticus also counts the same act among the laws of uncleanness, “he will be unclean for seven days” (15:24).
• Inference. For the commands the New Testament names, the line is stated. For those it does not name, 18:19 above all, it is a reading: whether the council’s “sexual immorality” takes in the whole chapter, as its order with Leviticus 17–18 suggests (5), or the sins the New Testament names; and whether 18:19 belongs with the laws of uncleanness, which pass (3), or with the sexual commands, which stay.

7. Divorce: what Moses permitted, and what Christ said.

• Stated. Moses: “If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her, and send her away from his house.” (Deuteronomy 24:1). Malachi: “‘For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel.” (Malachi 2:16). Jesus: “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hardness of heart; but it was not this way from the beginning. Now I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman, commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:6, 8–9; 5:32); and, without the exception, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.” (Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18). Paul: “A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7:10–11); and of a marriage to an unbeliever, “But if the unbeliever leaves, let him go. The believing brother or sister is not bound in such cases. God has called you to live in peace.” (7:15).
• Measured. The exception stands in Matthew alone, παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας (5:32) and μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ (19:9); Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18 have none.
• Inference. What Moses permitted, Jesus traces to “hardness of heart” and sets back to “the beginning” (Matthew 19:8), so the permission of Deuteronomy 24:1 does not pass into the new covenant as it stood: stated. Divorce and marriage to another are adultery, except, in Matthew, for sexual immorality; and the believer whom an unbelieving spouse leaves “is not bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15): stated. How far Matthew’s exception reaches, and whether “not bound” frees the one left to marry again, the texts do not settle: readings.

8. Tattoos: Leviticus 19:28.

• Stated. “You must not cut off the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. You must not make any cuts in your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:27–28); “do not cut yourselves or shave your foreheads on behalf of the dead” (Deuteronomy 14:1). The council laid on Gentile believers nothing “beyond these essential requirements” (Acts 15:28; 3 above). And of the body: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
• Measured. Both words of “tattoo marks”, kĕtōbet qaʿăqaʿ, stand only in this verse of the Hebrew Bible, so their sense rests on this verse and its setting.
• Inference. The command stands among the rites for the dead (Leviticus 19:28; Deuteronomy 14:1), beside the beard of 19:27, and the New Testament does not give it again. So it is not laid on Gentile believers as law: follows, from Acts 15:28. Whether it still guides them, and whether its reason was the mourning rite or any mark, is a reading; the body that is the Spirit’s temple (1 Corinthians 6:19–20) is the frame the New Testament gives for weighing any mark on it.

9. The tithe, before Christ and after.

• Stated: before. Abram “gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything” (Genesis 14:20), and Jacob vowed, “of all that You give me I will surely give You a tenth” (28:22), before the Law. The Law: “Thus any tithe from the land, whether from the seed of the land or the fruit of the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD.” (Leviticus 27:30); “I have given to the Levites all the tithes in Israel as an inheritance in return for the work they do” (Numbers 18:21); a tithe eaten “in the presence of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 14:22–26); and every third year, for “the Levite (because he has no portion or inheritance among you), the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow” (14:28–29). Malachi: “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this” (Malachi 3:10).
• Stated: after. To the scribes and Pharisees: “You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” (Matthew 23:23). Hebrews: “Now the law commands the sons of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people” (Hebrews 7:5), and “when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed as well” (7:12). To the churches: “On the first day of every week, each of you should set aside a portion of his income” (1 Corinthians 16:2); “Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not out of regret or compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7); “the Lord has prescribed that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14).
• Measured. The tithe words, ἀποδεκατόω, δεκατόω and δεκάτη, stand in nine New Testament verses: three in the Gospels, of the Pharisees (Matthew 23:23; Luke 11:42; 18:12), and six in Hebrews 7, of Abraham and Levi. The other twenty-four books have none.
• Inference. Before Christ the tithe was given by Abraham and Jacob, and commanded in the Law for the Levites, the feasts and the poor: stated. After Christ no text lays a tithe on believers; the letters command giving that is set aside each week, decided in the heart and cheerful, and the support of those who preach: stated. Jesus’ “without neglecting the former” was spoken to those under the Law, whose priesthood received the tithe (Hebrews 7:5); whether it carries the tithe past the change of priesthood (7:12) is a reading. That a tenth is a fitting measure of the giving the letters command is a reading.

10. Before the Law: what God commanded Abraham.

• Stated: the commands. The call: “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1); “So Abram departed, as the LORD had directed him” (12:4). In the land: “Get up and walk around the land, through its length and breadth, for I will give it to you.” (13:17). In the vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” (15:1); “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” (15:5); “Bring Me a heifer, a goat, and a ram” (15:9). At ninety-nine: “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be blameless.” (17:1). The sign: “Every male among you must be circumcised.”; “this will be a sign of the covenant between Me and you”; “when he is eight days old”; “But if any male is not circumcised, he will be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.” (17:10–14). The names: “your name will be Abraham”, “her name is to be Sarah”, “you are to name him Isaac” (17:5, 15, 19). Over Hagar and her son: “Listen to everything that Sarah tells you, for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.” (21:12). At Moriah: “Offer him there as a burnt offering” (22:2), and then, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him” (22:12).
• Stated: what the commands were for. “For I have chosen him, so that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just” (18:19). And of the whole: “because Abraham listened to My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” (26:5).
• Measured.
  • 26:5 opens with the clause that closes the offering of Isaac, “because you have obeyed My voice” (22:18): ʿēqeb ʾăšer šāmaʿ … bĕqōlî, ‘because … listened to My voice’. ʿēqeb, ‘because’, with ‘listen’ and ‘voice’ stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible: these two, and Deuteronomy 8:20, of a people who do not listen.
  • Its four nouns, mišmeret, miṣwōt, ḥuqqōt and tôrōt (‘charge’, ‘commandments’, ‘statutes’, ‘laws’), stand together in one other verse, David’s charge to Solomon, “as is written in the Law of Moses” (1 Kings 2:3).
  • In all six verses where Genesis says that a man walked with God or before him (Enoch, 5:22, 24; Noah, 6:9; Abraham, 17:1 and 24:40; Abraham and Isaac, 48:15), the Greek translators wrote εὐαρεστέω, ‘to please’. Genesis 17:1 reads εὐαρέστει ἐναντίον ἐμοῦ καὶ γίνου ἄμεμπτος, ‘be pleasing before me and be blameless’. In the New Testament the verb stands only in Hebrews (11:5, 6; 13:16), which says that Enoch was “one who pleased God” and that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (11:5–6). ἄμεμπτος, ‘blameless’, is Paul’s word in “so that you may be blameless and pure” (Philippians 2:15).
  • ‘Not spare’ (φείδομαι) with a father’s own son as its object stands in the Greek Bible only at Genesis 22:12 and 16, οὐκ ἐφείσω τοῦ υἱοῦ σου τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ, ‘you did not spare your beloved son’, and at Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all”.
• Stated: the New Testament on each. The going: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8). Faith before the sign: “Was it after his circumcision, or before? It was not after, but before.” “And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” (Romans 4:10–11); “In Him you were also circumcised”, “with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands” (Colossians 2:11); “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. All that matters is faith, expressed through love.” (Galatians 5:6). Before the Law: “The law that came 430 years later does not revoke the covenant previously established by God, so as to nullify the promise.” (Galatians 3:17); the promise “was not given through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith” (Romans 4:13). Sarah and Hagar: Paul quotes Sarah’s word, “Expel the slave woman and her son”, and says, “These things serve as illustrations, for the women represent two covenants.” (Galatians 4:24, 30). Isaac: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac on the altar.” (Hebrews 11:17); “his faith was working with his actions, and his faith was perfected by what he did” (James 2:22). For all who believe: “Now the words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not only for Abraham,” “but also for us” (Romans 4:23–24); “those who have faith are sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7); and Jesus, “you would do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39).
• Background (Jewish). Jewish readers differ over 26:5. Some held that the fathers kept the whole Torah before it was given; Ramban (Nachmanides) set against that view acts of theirs that the Torah forbids (Ezra Bick, “Ramban on Toldot: Did the Avot Keep the Torah?”).
• Inference.
  • The commands for Abraham’s own life, to leave, to walk the land, to bring the offering, to take the new names, to listen to Sarah, to offer Isaac and then to spare him, are spoken to him, of his own house and journey, and no later text lays them on anyone else. Follows. The New Testament takes up two of them: Sarah’s word as an illustration of the two covenants (Galatians 4:24, 30), and the offering of Isaac as faith tested and shown in deed (Hebrews 11:17; James 2:22): stated.
  • Circumcision, the one command laid on his household and his descendants (17:9–14), is fulfilled in Christ and not laid on Gentile believers (Colossians 2:11; Galatians 5:6; 3, above): stated. Abraham was counted righteous before it, so the sign followed the faith it sealed (Romans 4:10–11): stated.
  • What stands is what the commands asked of him: the faith counted as righteousness (Romans 4:23–24), the walk before God, and doing “what is right and just”, each asked again in the New Testament’s own words (“blameless”, Philippians 2:15; “the works of Abraham”, John 8:39; the moral commands, 2, above). Follows.
  • That 26:5’s four words mean the commands God gave Abraham himself, the “voice” of 22:18, and not the Law of Sinai kept in advance, rests on the clause the two verses share, on the Law’s coming later (Galatians 3:17; Romans 4:13), and on the fathers’ doing what the Law would forbid: Abraham married his father’s daughter (Genesis 20:12; Leviticus 18:9), and Jacob two sisters (Genesis 29:28; Leviticus 18:18). The rival, that the fathers kept the whole Torah before it was given, accounts for the four words but must account for these acts too. Moderate.
  • That Paul’s “did not spare His own Son” recalls the offering of Isaac rests on the wording alone, found in the Greek Bible only there and at Genesis 22:12 and 16. Moderate.

For the sequence. At the council James finds the Gentiles’ coming in Amos: “so that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name” (Acts 15:17). Measured: he quotes the Greek of Amos 9:12, ἐκζητήσωσιν οἱ κατάλοιποι τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ‘that the remnant of men may seek’; the Hebrew has “that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear My name” (Amos 9:12). In Hebrew letters ʾĕdôm, ‘Edom’, and ʾādām, ‘man’, differ by one letter, as do yîrĕšû, ‘they will possess’, and yidrĕšû, ‘they will seek’. That the Greek translator read the second word in each pair is a reading. Either way the verse ends with all the nations called by the LORD’s name: the nations once ruled by other powers (step 8) now bear his name, under the new covenant (steps 15–17). Moderate, on Joint 1’s rule.

In one sentence. In Christ a new covenant has come: the moral commands are given again and deepened, nine of the ten among them; sacrifice, priesthood, the laws of clean and unclean food, feasts, circumcision and the Sabbath day are fulfilled in him and not laid on Gentile believers, while how the Law’s ‘forever’ and Matthew 5:18 stand with them, and whether Jewish believers keep the customs, are readings; the church’s penalty is exclusion, and the sword the state’s; Moses’ permission of divorce is set back to the beginning, with Matthew’s one exception; the ban on tattoo marks is not laid on Gentile believers as law, and whether the tithe binds after Christ is a reading; and the line between what is kept and what is fulfilled is drawn by the New Testament itself for the commands it names, and is a reading where it passes through Leviticus 18:19.

The texts’ word for a happy life is ‘blessed’. They give instructions for it, and they say where its joy is found. Research on happiness has measured some of the same things, and some that cut the other way. This section sets each instruction beside what has been measured, with the record of the measuring, and grades it.

1. Blessed.

• Stated. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or set foot on the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season” (Psalm 1:1–3). “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:3–9). “Who is the man who delights in life, who desires to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from deceitful speech. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:12–14). “I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11).
• Measured. The Hebrew ʾašrê, ‘blessed’, opens Psalm 1 and stands in 42 verses of the Hebrew Bible; the Greek μακάριος stands in 49 verses of the New Testament, nine of them the Beatitudes of Matthew 5. It is also the word of “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35): μακάριόν ἐστιν μᾶλλον διδόναι.

2. Love God, and love your neighbor.

• Stated. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37–40). “And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). “Two are better than one”; “pity the one who falls without another to help him up!”; “a cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–12).
• Measured by others. From the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which began in 1938 with 268 Harvard sophomores, men only, as the College then was: “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed.” Its director, Robert Waldinger: “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too.” (Harvard Gazette, 11 April 2017). The study observes; “keep people happy” is the Gazette’s reading of an association.

3. Contentment, not riches.

• Stated. “Of course, godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, so we cannot carry anything out of it.” “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Timothy 6:6–10). “He who loves money is never satisfied by money” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Paul: “I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances.” (Philippians 4:11). “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: ‘Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.’” (Hebrews 13:5). “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:33–34).
• Measured by others. On valuing money, a meta-analysis of 259 samples: “Materialism was associated with significantly lower well-being for the most widely used, multifaceted measures” (“The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, 2014). On having money, the other way: “this suggests that for most people larger incomes are associated with greater happiness” (Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, 2023, as ScienceDaily reports it).
• Where readers differ: the prosperity reading. In a survey of ten countries, “in nine of the countries most pentecostals say that God will grant material prosperity to all believers who have enough faith.” (Pew Research Center, Spirit and Power, 2006). Texts that speak of wealth and health: “it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to gain wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18), said to Israel “to confirm His covenant”; “Beloved, I pray that in every way you may prosper and enjoy good health, as your soul also prospers.” (3 John 2), a greeting to one man. Against the reading: “These men regard godliness as a means of gain.” (1 Timothy 6:5); “Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation” (6:9); and of the faithful, “They went around in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, oppressed, and mistreated.” “These were all commended for their faith” (Hebrews 11:37, 39). And to the poor: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” (Luke 6:20, 24).
• Inference. The research on valuing money agrees with the texts’ warning against loving it (1 Timothy 6:10; Hebrews 13:5). The research on income runs partly the other way, where the texts call the poor blessed (Luke 6:20); yet they do not deny that wealth can be enjoyed, “This is a gift from God.” (Ecclesiastes 5:19), and their blessing on the poor is “the kingdom of God”, not a reported feeling. Whether the two then conflict is a reading. That God grants wealth to all who have enough faith is ruled out, by 1 Timothy 6:5 and by the faithful who were “destitute” and yet “commended for their faith” (Hebrews 11:37, 39).

4. Gratitude and rejoicing.

• Stated. “Rejoice at all times. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18). “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6–7). “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” (Proverbs 17:22).
• Measured by others. In three trials of keeping gratitude lists, “The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups.” “Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.” (Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84, 2003). A later meta-analysis, of 27 studies with 3,675 people, found that “Gratitude interventions had a small effect on symptoms of depression and anxiety” (g = −0.29; David Cregg and Jennifer Cheavens, Journal of Happiness Studies 22, 2021), and, as Ohio State reported it, “The gratitude intervention was not much better at relieving anxiety and depression than the seemingly unrelated activity.”

5. Giving.

• Stated. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35); “For God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7); “A generous soul will prosper, and he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” (Proverbs 11:25).
• Measured by others. “Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.” (Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton, Science 319, 2008). A close replication, with 133 people, reports that “when we used the same analysis in our replication (N = 133), we did not observe a significant difference”, though “a more direct measure of happiness” showed an effect in the original direction (Garam Kim and colleagues, PLOS ONE 17, 2022); and a registered replication found that “these studies support the hypothesis that spending money on others does promote happiness, but demonstrate that the magnitude of the effect depends on several methodological features.” (Aknin and colleagues, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2020, as the FORRT replication atlas quotes it).

6. Forgiveness.

• Stated. “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14). “Do not let the sun set upon your anger” (Ephesians 4:26); “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger”, “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.” (4:31–32). And with rebuke: “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.” (Luke 17:3); “If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately.” (Matthew 18:15).
• Measured by others. A review of randomized trials concluded: “The findings provide moderately strong evidence to suggest that forgiving a variety of real-life interpersonal offenses can be effective in promoting different dimensions of mental well-being.” (Sadaf Akhtar and Jane Barlow, Trauma, Violence and Abuse, 2016).
• Measured by others: a caution. In the first years of marriage, “The partners of spouses who reported being more likely to express forgiveness reported committing acts of psychological and physical aggression against those partners that remained stable over the first 4 years of marriage.” (J. K. McNulty, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, 2011, as summarized at icccr.tc.columbia.edu).
• Inference. The texts’ forgiveness is joined to rebuke and to the offender’s turning (Luke 17:3–4; Matthew 18:15–17), not to silence under wrong: stated. Whether that joined form escapes the cost McNulty measured, no study quoted here has tested: not shown.

7. Rest, and worship together.

• Stated. To Israel the Law commands a day of rest: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Exodus 20:8–9); “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). After Christ the day is not commanded again: it is a shadow, and its rest remains, which follows, and whether Christians keep a weekly rest as a command or as a gift is a reading (Old covenant and new, 2). What Christ gives is a promise: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). Worship together is commanded: “Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:25); “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!” (Psalm 133:1).
• Measured by others. “More than one-third of actively religious U.S. adults (36%) describe themselves as very happy, compared with just a quarter of both inactive and unaffiliated Americans.” Elsewhere the difference is significant in fewer countries: “Across 25 other countries for which data are available, actives report being happier than the unaffiliated by a statistically significant margin in almost half (12 countries), and happier than inactively religious adults in roughly one-third (nine) of the countries.” On health, the same report finds “no statistical link between being actively religious and being in better self-reported overall health in any of the 26 countries and territories studied except Taiwan, Mexico and the United States.” (Pew Research Center, 2019). Among women followed for sixteen years in the Nurses’ Health Study, “Frequent religious service attendance was associated with significantly lower risk of all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality.” (Shanshan Li, Meir Stampfer, David Williams and Tyler VanderWeele, JAMA Internal Medicine 176, 2016); its authors add that “the study consists mainly of white Christians”, and that “the results may still be subject to unmeasured confounders and residual confounding.” In a cohort of 24,855 people in southern Sweden, attendance was linked with lower mortality “until social participation items were introduced in the final model.” (Martin Lindström and Mirnabi Pirouzifard, SSM: Population Health 23, 2023). These are associations, not proofs of cause.

8. Work, and the enjoyment of God’s gifts.

• Stated. “Nothing is better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works”; “Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of the fleeting life that God has given you under the sun”; “Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with all your might” (9:7–10). “Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). And the end of the matter: “Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

9. Joy that holds through trials.

• Stated. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” (James 1:2–3). “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:3–5). “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4). Jesus, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).
• Stated: lament. The texts keep the laments of the faithful: “darkness is my closest companion” (Psalm 88:18); “How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1); “Cursed be the day I was born!” (Jeremiah 20:14). Elijah prayed, “Take my life”, and the angel said, “Get up and eat.” (1 Kings 19:4–5). Jesus: “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Matthew 26:38). And the command: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15).
• Stated, in sum. The texts’ happiness is not the absence of suffering: the mourners are called blessed (Matthew 5:4), and joy is set before the cross, not instead of it (Hebrews 12:2).
• Inference. The texts that bid joy keep the laments of the faithful, answer Elijah’s with bread, command weeping with those who weep, and show Jesus, “without sin”, sorrowful to the point of death (Matthew 26:38). So in the texts grief is not disobedience, and the command to rejoice is no command to feel no sorrow. Follows.

What the texts and the research share, and where they part. The texts’ instructions for a blessed life are eleven: love of God, love of neighbor, contentment, gratitude, giving, forgiveness, worship together, honest work, the enjoyment of God’s gifts, joy that holds through trials, and a weekly rest, commanded to Israel and, for Christians, a command or a gift on a reading (7). Research quoted here has measured six of them, some only in part: relationships, a part of love of neighbor; contentment, through its opposite, the valuing of money; gratitude; giving; forgiveness; and worship together. It finds them linked to happiness or well-being, in surveys whose links are associations, not proofs of cause, in a health link that holds in the United States and few other countries, and in trials whose effects are small or, for giving, of a size that depends on the method. It adds a caution to forgiveness (6). On two comparisons it runs partly the other way: happiness rises with income for most people, where the texts call the poor blessed (3); and married people report more satisfaction than the unmarried, “suggesting a causal effect” (Shawn Grover and John Helliwell, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014), where Paul, “In my judgment”, calls the widow who stays unmarried “happier” (1 Corinthians 7:40). The texts’ ‘blessed’ is God’s verdict and its end, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3), not a reported feeling; whether these comparisons then conflict with the texts is a reading. The research is a witness to the instructions, not a premise for them; the texts ground them in God, not in their results. And the texts name an end that no study can measure: “You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11). The instructions are stated; the research is consistent with six of them in part, with small effects, and runs partly against two of the texts’ comparisons.

For the sequence. The last beatitude of the canon, μακάριοι, stands at the tree of the nations’ healing: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by its gates.” (Revelation 22:14; 22:2; step 17). The blessed of the texts end where the nations are healed. Stated. Step 9’s promise, “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), which Paul reads as the gospel to the nations (Galatians 3:8; Salvation), uses another word. Measured: Genesis 12:3’s verb is bārak, ‘bless’, not ʾašrê. That the happy life is Abraham’s blessing come to the nations rests on two words that English renders alike: weak.

In one sentence. The texts’ instructions for a happy life are to love God and neighbor, be content, give thanks, give, forgive, worship together, work and enjoy God’s gifts, and hold to joy through trials, with a weekly rest commanded to Israel and, for Christians, a command or a gift on a reading; research quoted here finds six of these eleven, some in part, linked to happiness or well-being, mostly by association and with small effects in trials, as a witness and not a premise, and on income and marriage it runs partly against the texts’ comparisons, where whether they conflict is a reading; the texts promise no wealth to faith, which the prosperity reading claims and Hebrews 11:37–39 rules out, and they keep the laments of the faithful, so that grief is not disobedience, which follows; and they set the end of a happy life in God’s presence, at the tree whose leaves heal the nations.

Step 17 ends with the devil in the lake of fire. This section asks whether hell can stand with a God who is everywhere present, almighty, all-knowing and good, and then sets out the principal texts on the end of the devil, of the angels who sinned and of the lost.

The words.

• Measured. In the BSB New Testament, “hell” stands in 13 verses: twelve render γέεννα, Gehenna, and one ταρταρόω (2 Peter 2:4). ᾅδης, the realm of the dead, stands in 10 verses and is rendered “Hades” in each. Revelation’s lake (λίμνη) of fire stands in five (19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8).
• Stated. Hades is not the lake. At the judgment “Death and Hades gave up their dead”, and then “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:13–14).

1. Good, and punishing.

• The attack. A wholly good God would not punish without end. In its strongest forms it takes its premises from the texts.
  • Proportion. “the dead were judged according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12), and God “will repay each one according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6). A life holds a finite number of deeds, and degrees, “many blows” or “few blows” (Luke 12:47–48), set how hard a punishment is, not how long. Jonathan Kvanvig puts it so: “The fundamental problem for the traditional conception of hell is that people receive an infinite punishment for less than infinite sin.”
  • Goodness to all. “The LORD is good to all; His compassion rests on all He has made” (Psalm 145:9); “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Marilyn McCord Adams writes of a God who loved each created person enough “to give each created person a life that is a great good to him/her on the whole”. No end of the lost, torment or destruction, leaves that true of them.
• The answer. The texts give the measure of the judgment as degree: “it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you” (Matthew 11:22). They do not measure it by the time a deed took: a killing, done in a moment, is answered with death, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed” (Genesis 9:6). Of the devil they say, “the devil has been sinning from the very start” (1 John 3:8); of men under the last plagues, “they did not repent of their deeds” (Revelation 16:11); and of a sin against God, “if a man sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” (1 Samuel 2:25). The psalm that says “The LORD is good to all” goes on, “The LORD preserves all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy” (145:20); Paul names “the kindness and severity of God” in one verse (Romans 11:22); and of Judas: “It would be better for him if he had not been born.” (Matthew 26:24). God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11), “He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33), and goodness includes justice (step 1): “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” (Genesis 18:25).
• Measured. 1 John 3:8’s “has been sinning” is the present ἁμαρτάνει, ‘sins’. Lamentations 3:33’s “willingly” is millibbô, ‘from his heart’, which the BSB renders “of his own choosing” at 1 Kings 12:33.
• Background: the replies. Nikk Effingham’s paper (2024) is “defending the Aquinas-Anselm-Edwards response that any immoral act deserves eternal punishment because it offends against God”. Aquinas states the principle, “a sin committed against God has a kind of infinity from the infinity of the Divine majesty, because the greater the person we offend, the more grievous the offense” (Summa Theologiae III, q. 1, a. 2), but rests the length of the punishment on the fault itself: “a fault which is irreparable, is such that, of itself, it lasts for ever; wherefore it incurs an everlasting punishment” (I-II, q. 87, a. 4).
• Inference. The texts state God’s goodness (Psalm 145:9; Mark 10:18) and torment without end for three (Revelation 20:10), so, read as one book (R1), they deny the attack’s premise as a rule for every case. Follows. That is their verdict, not an argument; the strong forms are weighed on their merits.
  • Proportion. An end for the lost keeps the texts’ measure: punishment by degree, then “the second death” (Revelation 20:14), one act whose result has no end, as in the death given for a killing (Genesis 9:6) and in the “eternal judgment” of Hebrews 6:2. Follows, on that reading. Torment without end keeps it only if the fault lasts as long as the punishment, or if the rank of the one offended makes the fault infinite. The texts give a lasting fault of the devil, to the time of writing (1 John 3:8), and of men only before the judgment (Revelation 16:11); they rank a sin against the LORD (1 Samuel 2:25) but nowhere call its guilt infinite. So, for the devil’s stated torment, the reply has a ground the texts give; for torment without end of the lost, only grounds they do not state. A reading; it weighs on the end of the lost (below).
  • Goodness to all. In the texts, goodness to all stands with the destruction of the wicked in one psalm (Psalm 145:9, 20) and with severity in one verse (Romans 11:22), and God’s punishing is unwilling, not absent (Ezekiel 33:11; Lamentations 3:33). So the texts’ “good to all” is not a promise that every life is a good on the whole to the one who lives it, and Matthew 26:24, in its plain sense, says the contrary of Judas. For human beings, Adams’s premise stands only if every condemned person is restored (No one condemned is restored, below). Moderate.
  • The attack needs a premise the texts never state: that a good God never punishes without end. With it the set contradicts itself; without it, each reading of hell below is consistent with the four attributes (the solver’s checks 4h). That check records only that the texts, as entered, do not state the premise; ‘good’ has no further content there, so it cannot show the premise false. The weighing above answers it.

2. Almighty, and wanting all to be saved.

• The attack. God “wants everyone to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4), and “no plan of Yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). If any are lost, he is not almighty, or he did not want it. Its strongest form adds that God “has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden” (Romans 9:18): a will that people refuse does not cover those whom God hardens. Augustine put the problem so: “it would seem that what God wills is not done, man's will interfering with, and hindering the will of God” (Enchiridion 97).
• The answer. The texts set his counsel over all things, which stands, beside his counsel for particular people, which they can refuse. “My purpose will stand” (Isaiah 46:10); but “how often I have longed to gather your children together … but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37), and the Pharisees “rejected God’s purpose for themselves” (Luke 7:30). Where the texts give hardening a ground, it is a refusal that came first: “because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:10–11); “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind” (Romans 1:28). In Paul’s own argument the hardening of Israel is “in part”, “until the full number of the Gentiles has come in” (11:25), “so that He may have mercy on everyone” (11:32).
• Measured. Matthew 23:37 uses one verb, θέλω, for his longing and for their refusal (ἠθέλησα … οὐκ ἠθελήσατε), and 1 Timothy 2:4’s “wants” is the same verb. Luke 7:30’s “purpose” is βουλή, the noun of Greek Isaiah 46:10, “All my counsel shall stand” in Brenton’s English, and of Acts 2:23’s “set plan”.
• Measured. Romans 9:18’s “wants” is θέλω too, twice (θέλει … θέλει), so the one verb names a longing refused in Matthew 23:37 and a will done in Romans 9:18. Its “hardens” is σκληρύνω, the verb of Greek Exodus for Pharaoh and the Egyptians (14 verses). In the Hebrew of Exodus 4–14 a verb of hardening stands with the heart of Pharaoh or of the Egyptians in 18 verses: the LORD hardens it, or says he will, in ten; Pharaoh “hardened his heart” in three (8:15, 32; 9:34); and in five the heart is the verb’s subject, “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened” (7:13, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35). The narrative first makes the LORD the subject of the act at 9:12, after the heart had hardened four times and Pharaoh had hardened it twice; the LORD foretells it before Pharaoh’s first refusal (4:21; 5:2).
• Background: two readings. John of Damascus: “God's original wish was that all should be saved and come to His Kingdom … But inasmuch as He is a just God, His will is that sinners should suffer punishment. The first then is called God's antecedent will and pleasure, and springs from Himself, while the second is called God's consequent will and permission, and has its origin in us.” (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.29). Augustine reads 1 Timothy 2:4’s ‘all men’ as “the human race in all its varieties of rank and circumstances” (Enchiridion 103).
• Inference. So the line between what can be refused and what cannot does not fall between two words: Isaiah 46:10 says all his counsel stands, and Luke 7:30 says these men refused his counsel “for themselves”. The distinction is of scope, his counsel for all things against his counsel for these men. A reading. The answer to the attack does not rest on it: the attack adds that what God wishes he also decrees; with that premise the texts contradict each other, and without it they are consistent (4f). Since the verb does not decide which will 1 Timothy 2:4 names, the texts keep it, the plan that stands, and those who “will never be forgiven” (Mark 3:29) together on either of two readings.
  • A will that people can refuse, with hardening as a judgment on a refusal, as the texts that give it a ground say and as Exodus tells it, though it was foretold. This is John of Damascus’s reading. It reads the choice of Romans 9:11–12 as the place each people holds, since the word it quotes, “The older will serve the younger” (9:12), was said of “Two nations” (Genesis 25:23).
  • ‘Everyone’ as every kind of person, read by its own passage, prayers “for everyone”, “for kings and all those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1–2), with Romans 9:18 as God’s choice, “not by works but by Him who calls” (9:11–12). This is Augustine’s. It reads the refused longing of Matthew 23:37 as he does: “even though she was unwilling, He gathered together as many of her children as He wished” (Enchiridion 97).
  • On either reading the texts do not contradict themselves, and God is not less than almighty: on the first his wish for each is refused, on the second it is not a wish for each, and the charge passes to goodness (1, above). Follows. Which reading is right, the texts do not decide. A reading.
  • Whether a creature that knew God fully could refuse him forever, the texts do not say: the demons “believe that—and shudder” (James 2:19), but of the devil, “there is no truth in him” (John 8:44). Open.

3. All-knowing, and making those who will be lost.

• The attack. God knew before creating who would refuse him; a good God would not make them.
• The answer. The texts state the foreknowledge (Isaiah 46:10; Acts 2:23) and the making, never the premise. They give patience, “not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), and in Paul a question left with God: “What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?” (Romans 9:22), “to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy” (9:23). Without the added premise the set is consistent (4i). That check records only that the texts do not state the premise. On its merits the texts answer it with a purpose, patience and the glory shown to the vessels of mercy, and give that purpose as a question, not a proof. A reading. Beyond it, the texts do not say why (Romans 11:33).

4. Everywhere present, and “separated from” him.

• The attack. Hell is separation from God, but God is everywhere.
• The answer. The texts do not put the lost where God is absent: “if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there” (Psalm 139:8), and the worshiper of the beast “will be tormented in fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (Revelation 14:10). The BSB’s 2 Thessalonians 1:9 reads “separated from the presence of the Lord”.
• Measured. The Greek of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 has no word for ‘separated’: ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ κυρίου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς δόξης τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ, ‘from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might’. Its second half stands word for word in Greek Isaiah 2:10, 19 and 21, whose first half is ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ φόβου κυρίου, ‘from the face of the fear of the Lord’: there men hide “from the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty”, and Brenton renders the phrase “for fear of the Lord, and by reason of the glory of his might”. There the face is present, and men flee from it.
• Inference. Read as God’s absence, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 would contradict Psalm 139:8 and Revelation 14:10; read as Isaiah’s phrase, it does not (4g). What the lost lose is his favor, not his presence. Follows.

Who the fire is for.

• Stated. The Son of Man sits “on His glorious throne”; “All the nations will be gathered before Him”. The blessed inherit “the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”; the cursed go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:31–41). The judge is a man: God “will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed” (Acts 17:31), “because He is the Son of Man” (John 5:27), “a merciful and faithful high priest” (Hebrews 2:17).
• Measured. The kingdom and the fire are both ἡτοιμασμένος, ‘prepared’: the kingdom for people, the fire for the devil and his angels. In the New Testament the verb stands with fire only here.
• Inference. The fire was made for the rebels of this sequence (steps 4, 5, 15 and 17), not for people. People go to it on the ground the passage gives: “For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat” (Matthew 25:42), and “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me” (25:45). Moderate.

The devil, the beast and the false prophet.

• Stated. “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, into which the beast and the false prophet had already been thrown. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” (Revelation 20:10)
• Measured. Revelation has “forever and ever” in 13 verses: twelve with the articles (εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων), and 14:11 without them. Four give the life of God, “who lives forever and ever” (4:9, 10; 10:6; 15:7), and one the life of Christ (1:18); 20:10 is the only one whose subject is torment, and its verb is plural. A torment that ended would be shorter than the phrase Revelation uses for the life of God.
• Words of ending read of the devil. “He will crush your head” (Genesis 3:15) and “will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20) promise defeat. Hebrews 2:14’s “destroy” is καταργέω, ‘put out of action’ (26 New Testament verses; also of death, 1 Corinthians 15:26; 2 Timothy 1:10), and the verse names what the devil loses: he “holds the power of death”. Isaiah 27:1 has the LORD “slay the dragon of the sea”, and Brenton’s English of the Greek reads “he shall destroy the dragon”. Ezekiel 28:19 tells the king of Tyre he “will be no more”.
• Measured. In the Greek Old Testament δράκων, ‘dragon’, and ὄφις, ‘serpent’, share a verse only in Isaiah 27:1 and Job 20:16, and only in Isaiah 27:1 do they name one creature. In the New Testament they share two verses, the two where Revelation names the devil: “that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9; 20:2).
• Inference. Revelation takes Isaiah’s dragon and serpent for the devil, so Isaiah 27:1’s ‘slay’ is said of one whom 20:10 has tormented without end. Read as his last end, it would contradict 20:10; read as his defeat, which ends in the lake that Revelation calls “the second death” (20:14), it does not (the solver’s checks in section 6). Ezekiel 28:19, read of the king its chapter names (28:12), does not bear on the devil’s end. So the texts use words of killing and destroying of one whose torment does not end. Strong.
• The beast’s ‘destruction’. Revelation says the beast will “go to its destruction” (17:8; 17:11), ἀπώλεια, the word of Matthew 7:13 and Philippians 3:19, and that it is tormented forever (20:10). Daniel’s fourth beast, “a fourth kingdom” (Daniel 7:23), “was slain, and its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire” (7:11). If the lawless one of 2 Thessalonians 2:8 is the beast, a reading, the Lord “will slay” him and “annihilate” him, and that ‘annihilate’ is καταργέω, the ‘destroy’ of Hebrews 2:14. Read as an end, the beast’s ‘destruction’ would contradict 20:10. So the word ‘destruction’ does not by itself decide whether an end is an end.
• Who the beast and the false prophet are. A reading. The beast “comes up from the Abyss” (11:7; 17:8), where spirits are kept (Luke 8:31; Revelation 20:3), and it “is an eighth king” (17:11); Daniel’s beasts are “four kings” and “a fourth kingdom” (Daniel 7:17, 23). Its number “is the number of a man” (13:18), the genitive Revelation also uses for the measure an angel uses, “the human measure the angel was using” (21:17). If the two are men, Revelation 20:10 states torment without end for two men: thrown in “alive” (19:20), they are in the lake when the devil is thrown in a thousand years later (20:7, 10), and “they will be tormented” with him.
• Result. Torment without end. Stated.

The angels who sinned.

• Stated. The fire was prepared “for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). The angels who left their domain are “kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day” (Jude 6); God put them “in chains of darkness to be held for judgment” (2 Peter 2:4); demons, if they are his angels (Demons and possession), ask, “Have You come here to torture us before the appointed time?” (Matthew 8:29); “we will judge angels” (1 Corinthians 6:3); “it is not the angels He helps, but the descendants of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16). Isaiah says the LORD “will punish the host of heaven above” (Isaiah 24:21); they “will be confined to a dungeon and punished after many days” (24:22), where the King James has “after many days shall they be visited”. To gods, two texts give an end: “But like mortals you will die, and like rulers you will fall.” (Psalm 82:7), and “These gods, who have made neither the heavens nor the earth, will perish from this earth and from under these heavens.” (Jeremiah 10:11).
• Measured. Isaiah 24:22’s verb is pāqad, the verb of 24:21’s “punish” (Qal there, Niphal here). Jude 6’s ‘eternal’ is ἀΐδιος, not αἰώνιος (in the New Testament only there and in Romans 1:20), and the chains hold until the judgment. Psalm 82:7’s “like mortals” is kĕʾādām, ‘like man’: the gods are given the death of men.
• Inference. Read by its own passage (R4), Isaiah 24:22 is punishment. No text states the end of the angels after the judgment in so many words, but one text bears on it in its plain sense. Luke 20:36, “can no longer die, because they are like the angels”, says that angels do not die as men die, not that God cannot end them (Man; 4l). Matthew 25:41 names them with the devil, “the devil and his angels”, as those for whom one fire was prepared, and the devil in it is tormented without end. One fire does not by itself give one end: the lake that torments the devil also ends Death and Hades (Revelation 20:14; 21:4). What joins the angels to his end is the phrase, persons named with their head, as in their fall: “the dragon and his angels” (Revelation 12:7–9). Psalm 82:7 and Jeremiah 10:11 give death and perishing to gods, but of some gods only; if those are among the angels who sinned, a premise beyond Joint 2 (which makes them the sons of Deuteronomy 32:8), Psalm 82:7 gives them the death of men, which does not by itself end the spirit (Matthew 10:28), and it says nothing of the angels of Jude 6 or Matthew 25:41. To give the angels an end, ‘the devil and his angels’, one phrase in Matthew 25:41, must go to two ends; Hebrews 2:16, “it is not the angels He helps”, rules out their restoration, not their end (the census, below). Torment without end, for the angels: moderate.

The lost: judged, and by degree.

• Stated. “the dead were judged according to their deeds, as recorded in the books”; “if anyone was found whose name was not written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:12, 15); “their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This is the second death.” (21:8). The measure differs: “it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you” (Matthew 11:22; Luke 12:47–48). Before the judgment, the rich man is “In Hades, where he was in torment”, with “a great chasm” fixed (Luke 16:23, 26).
• Universal restoration is ruled out. The devil is tormented “forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10), and the one who speaks against the Holy Spirit “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come” (Matthew 12:32); “will never be forgiven; he is guilty of eternal sin” (Mark 3:29). Follows, from the texts stated.
• No one condemned is restored. “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46) gives the punishment the word of the life, as does “the penalty of eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Read as in ‘eternal life’, αἰώνιος gives the punishment no end. Of Judas: “It would be better for him if he had not been born.” (Matthew 26:24). Of the angels: “it is not the angels He helps”, the help of 2:17, “to make atonement for the sins of the people”. Against these stand Colossians 1:20, “to reconcile to Himself all things”, in heaven and on earth, and 1 Timothy 4:10, “the Savior of everyone”, whose passages state no limit (below). Read in their plain sense, the two sides leave no answer (the census, below), so R2 must choose. Read by their own letters, Colossians 1:20 by 2:15, where the powers are “disarmed”, and 1 Timothy 4:10 with ‘Savior’ in a wider sense for everyone than for believers (its “especially” ranks, and excludes no one), they do not stand against αἰώνιος. Moderate.

The lost: an end, or torment without end? Here readers divide, and the texts must be set side by side.

• Read as an end, after judgment.
  • “He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12); “raging fire that will consume all adversaries” (Hebrews 10:27). Sodom and Gomorrah: “reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6), “an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). Malachi 4:1, 3 (3:19, 21 in the Hebrew and Greek), in Brenton’s English of the Greek: “there shall not be left of them root or branch”; “they shall be ashes underneath your feet”.
  • “all the wicked He will destroy” (Psalm 145:20); “shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16); “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23); the lake is “the second death” (Revelation 20:14; 21:8).
  • The lake ends what is thrown into it after the devil: “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14), and then “there will be no more death” (21:4); “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death and Hades are not persons.
  • The worm and the fire are on the dead: “they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched” (Isaiah 66:24).
  • Texts that state his power, not its use: “fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell”, set against those who “cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28); “the One who is able to save and destroy” (James 4:12).
  • Texts with ἀπώλεια, which the beast’s case shows does not decide by itself: “the way that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13); “Their end is destruction” (Philippians 3:19); “the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7). With ὄλεθρος: “the penalty of eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
  • An argument from silence: life without end is given, not owned. God barred sinful man from the tree, “lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22); at the end, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life” (Revelation 22:14). God “alone is immortal” (1 Timothy 6:16); to those who “seek glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7); at the resurrection “the mortal” is clothed “with immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53), and those raised so are “those who belong to Him” (15:23). No text gives the lost immortality and none says they lack it; neither is said of the devil, who is tormented without end.
• Read as torment without end.
  • “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46)
  • “he will be tormented in fire and sulfur”, and “the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. Day and night there is no rest for those who worship the beast” (Revelation 14:10–11).
  • The lost go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41; 18:8), the lake where the devil is tormented forever with the beast and the false prophet, thrown in “alive” (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 15).
  • “their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched” (Mark 9:48), in a passage that throws the one who sins into hell whole, with “two hands” (9:43–47).
  • “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42, 50); “others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2); “for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 13); “the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36); and after all things are made new, “outside are the dogs” (Revelation 22:15).
  • Words of ending are said of those whose torment does not end: the devil (Isaiah 27:1; Hebrews 2:14) and the beast (Revelation 17:8; 20:10), above. And the first death does not end the soul: men “cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Luke 16:23), so ‘death’ need not mean an end.
• Measured.
  • In Revelation 14:11 “forever and ever” is said of the smoke, not of the torment: ὁ καπνὸς τοῦ βασανισμοῦ αὐτῶν εἰς αἰῶνας αἰώνων ἀναβαίνει. Its ‘no rest day and night’ is the phrase used of the four living creatures in 4:8 (ἀνάπαυσιν οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτός), and it carries no ‘forever’. The smoke repeats Isaiah 34:10 on Edom, “It will not be quenched—day or night. Its smoke will ascend forever.”, where the land “will lie desolate” and owls “will possess it” (34:10–11). Revelation uses it again for Babylon, “Her smoke rises forever and ever.” (19:3), a city “never to be seen again” (18:21). Its word for torment, βασανισμός, stands only in Revelation: of the locusts’ sting (9:5), of the worshipers of the beast (14:11), and of Babylon (18:7, 10, 15).
  • αἰώνιος, ‘eternal’, qualifies life in 43 verses, and also acts: “eternal salvation”, “eternal judgment”, “eternal redemption”, obtained “once for all” (Hebrews 5:9; 6:2; 9:12), and “eternal sin” (Mark 3:29): an act done once whose result has no end. Matthew 25:46’s κόλασις, ‘punishment’ (in the New Testament only there and in 1 John 4:18), and 2 Thessalonians 1:9’s ὄλεθρος, ‘destruction’, can be read the same way, or as acts that never end.
  • Matthew’s active verb ἀπόλλυμι, ‘destroy’, has people as its object five other times, each time of putting to death: Herod would search for the child “to kill Him” (2:13); the Pharisees plot to “kill Jesus” (12:14); the crowd is persuaded “to have Jesus put to death” (27:20; also 21:41; 22:7). In 10:28 it stands beside ἀποκτείνω, ‘kill’, twice in one verse. With ψυχή, the ‘soul’ of 10:28, as its object, it means ‘lose’: “Whoever finds his life will lose it” (10:39; 16:25).
  • Isaiah 66:24’s pigrê is the word for dead bodies (21 verses), and its dērāʾôn, “a horror to all mankind”, recurs only in Daniel 12:2, as the “everlasting contempt”. Its lōʾ tikbeh, ‘will not be quenched’, is said in Jeremiah 17:27 of “an unquenchable fire” kindled “to consume the citadels of Jerusalem”. Mark 9:48 gives Isaiah 66:24’s second half, its verbs in the present, but no word for a corpse stands in Mark 9:42–50.
  • ‘Immortality’ (ἀθανασία) and ‘incorruption’ (ἀφθαρσία, ἄφθαρτος) are never said of the lost: in the New Testament they belong to God (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16; Romans 1:23), to those raised in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:42–54; 2 Timothy 1:10), to those who seek them by doing good (Romans 2:7), and to things.
• Inference. Read every text in its plain sense (R4) and no answer is left for the lost: the first list rules out torment without end, and the second rules out an end (the script’s census, section 6). So R4 cannot choose, and R2 requires that one list be read in a secondary sense; the four rules do not say which.
  • An end after judgment must read Matthew 25:46 by the pattern of the eternal acts, an act done once whose result has no end; Revelation 14:11 by its source in Isaiah 34:10 and its echo in 19:3; the weeping of Matthew 13:42, 50 as before the end; the lake as an end for the lost, as it is for Death and Hades (20:14; 21:4), though the only persons whose stay in it is told are tormented (20:10); and the beast and the false prophet as powers, or as a named exception.
  • Torment without end must read ‘burn up’, ‘consume’, ‘ashes’, ‘perish’, ‘death’, ‘destroy’ and ‘corpses’ as ruin that does not end the one ruined, as the texts read ‘slay’ and ‘destruction’ of the devil and the beast; it must hold that the lost are raised to an existence without end, which no text states and none denies; and it must keep “according to their deeds” (20:12) by a fault that lasts after the judgment or by the rank of the one offended, which the texts do not state of the lost (1, above).
  • Each list has texts in their plain sense that the other must read otherwise, and each has strong single texts. The support is comparable. A reading.

‘All’, read with its limits. Read ‘all’ with the limits its own passage states (rule R3; The sequence as a conditional proof). Most of the texts often cited for the salvation of all state a limit, or say how the ‘all’ is brought under him. Four state neither: two are read by their own letter or book (1 John 2:2 with 5:12; Revelation 5:13 as Philippians 2:10), and two, Colossians 1:20 and 1 Timothy 4:10, stand against αἰώνιος, so that R2 must choose (No one condemned is restored, above).

The census. The script enters each principal text with the ends its words rule out and the ground on which they do, then counts which of the 27 combinations of ends for the devil (with the beast and the false prophet), the angels who sinned and the lost are left (The sequence as a conditional proof, section 6). It gives each party one kind of end, so a text about some of a party (Mark 3:29; Jeremiah 10:11) rules out nothing for the whole. The count is made in Python over entries made by hand, not by the solver: it shows what follows from the entries, not that each reads its text rightly.

• On what the texts state. Nine combinations remain. In all nine the devil is tormented without end, so universal restoration is ruled out; on the stated words alone, the angels and the rest of the lost may each be tormented, destroyed or restored.
• With αἰώνιος read as in ‘eternal life’. Six remain, and none restores the lost.
• Adding to αἰώνιος Hebrews 2:16 in its plain sense (R4). Four remain, and none restores the angels, who are tormented without end or destroyed. Luke 20:36 is not entered: its ‘can no longer die’ is the death the raised escape, not an end by God’s sentence (4l).
• Adding R4 on the texts on the lost. The destruction texts leave two answers, the lost destroyed in both; the torment texts leave two, the lost tormented without end in both; both lists together leave none.
• From the stated texts, with R4 on the ‘all’ texts. Colossians 1:20 and 1 Timothy 4:10, read in their plain sense for every party, contradict Revelation 20:10 and leave none; with the devil excepted by R2 they leave one answer, the angels and the lost restored. Set beside αἰώνιος, or beside Hebrews 2:16, they leave none. Here too R4 cannot choose, and the grade rests on the support.
• Readings set aside, and kept. ‘All’ read as every being restored, the devil included, contradicts Revelation 20:10. The beast’s ‘destruction’ read as an end contradicts 20:10. Isaiah 27:1’s ‘slay’, read as the devil’s last end, contradicts 20:10; read as his defeat into the second death, it does not. Ezekiel 28:19 read as the devil’s last end contradicts 20:10; read of the king of Tyre, it does not.
• Demons. Where they come from is a reading (Demons and possession), and their end follows the reading. As the devil’s angels, theirs is the angels’ end, above. As the spirits of the giants, the early readers’ account, no canonical text states their end beyond the torment they fear “before the appointed time” (Matthew 8:29). As the spirits of the wicked dead, Josephus’s account, they are among the lost. The census does not count them apart.

The answer, graded.

• The devil, the beast and the false prophet are tormented without end. Stated.
• Universal restoration is ruled out. Follows.
• No one condemned, human or angel, is restored. Moderate: αἰώνιος read as in ‘eternal life’ (Matthew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:9) and Hebrews 2:16–17 favor it; Colossians 1:20 and 1 Timothy 4:10, read without their letters, favor the rival.
• The lost are judged by their deeds and punished by degree. Stated. Whether the second death then ends them is a reading: the destruction texts, and the measure by deeds, which an end keeps without an added ground (1, above), favor an end; Matthew 25:46, Revelation 14:10–11 and 20:10, where the beast and the false prophet, thrown in “alive” a thousand years before, are tormented with the devil, favor torment without end; the four rules do not decide.
• The angels who sinned are held for judgment, and the eternal fire was prepared for them. Stated. That it torments them without end is moderate: Matthew 25:41’s one phrase, ‘the devil and his angels’, favors it, though one fire alone does not give one end (Revelation 20:14); Hebrews 2:16 rules out their restoration only, and an end needs a premise beyond Joint 2.
• Against the four attributes, the attacks are answered on their merits. That a good God may punish without end follows from what the texts state; that such punishment keeps their measure by deeds is a reading for the lost; that goodness to all is no promise that every life is a good on the whole is moderate; his wish that all be saved stands with his almighty plan on either of two readings, which the texts do not decide; and his making those he foreknew would refuse answers to a purpose the texts give as a question, a reading (1–3, above).
• Under each answer the encoded set is consistent (4h); that the four attributes stand rests on the answers given on their merits (1–3, above, and the bullet before this one). No paradox remains: each reading set aside contradicts a stated text, and each answer left is consistent. Where plain senses collide, on the end of the lost and on restoration against αἰώνιος, R2 requires a choice, and the method gives a graded answer, not a proof. A question the texts leave open is not a paradox (Mystery is not paradox, under God’s attributes).

The word.

• Measured. šāmayim, ‘heaven’ or ‘heavens’, stands in 395 verses. It is the sky, “God called the expanse ‘sky.’” (Genesis 1:8), and the place of his throne. Six verses speak of the “highest heavens” (šĕmê haššāmayim, ‘heavens of heavens’: Deuteronomy 10:14; 1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chronicles 2:6; 6:18; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 148:4), and Paul once of “the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2).

The throne and the council.

• Stated. “The LORD has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all.” (Psalm 103:19). Micaiah saw “the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left” (1 Kings 22:19), and “the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD” (Job 1:6; steps 2 and 10). Heaven does not hold God: “Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain You” (1 Kings 8:27). The rebels lose their place there: “no longer was any place found in heaven for him and his angels” (Revelation 12:8; step 15). The Son “entered heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God” (Hebrews 9:24).

Now: with Christ, and waiting.

• Stated. To the thief: “today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Paul was “caught up to the third heaven”, “caught up to Paradise” (2 Corinthians 12:2, 4), and would “depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed” (Philippians 1:23); he would prefer “to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). The souls of the slain are “under the altar” and are told “to rest a little while longer” (Revelation 6:9, 11).
• Measured. παράδεισος, ‘Paradise’, stands in three New Testament verses (Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 12:4; Revelation 2:7). It is the Greek word for the garden in Eden (Genesis 2:8), and Revelation 2:7 places in it “the tree of life”.
• Measured. In the SBL text of Luke 23:43 no comma stands on either side of σήμερον, “today”, so the words alone must place it. Of the 75 New Testament verses with ‘Truly I tell you’ (ἀμήν with λέγω), this is the only one in which ‘today’ follows the formula; in Mark 14:30, the only other that has σήμερον, it stands inside what is told, after ὅτι, ‘that’. In Luke’s ten other verses with σήμερον it never goes with a verb of saying: “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9); “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today” (22:34). In the Greek Old Testament, ‘I command you today’, ‘I testify to you today’ and ‘I declare to you today’ stand in 35 verses, all in Deuteronomy, as in “I declare to you today that you will surely perish” (Deuteronomy 30:18); ‘I tell you today’ (λέγω) in none.
• Inference. The faithful dead are with Christ: Paul joins being with him to departing (Philippians 1:23) and to being away from the body (2 Corinthians 5:8). Follows. It is not yet the end: the slain are to rest “a little while longer” (Revelation 6:11), and the dead are raised “at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Follows. That they are aware there, so that heaven now is a life and a waiting, as the cry “How long” (6:10) pictures it, is moderate: the sleep of the soul is its live rival (Man). That ‘today’ in Luke 23:43 goes with “you will be with Me” is moderate: Luke’s own use favors it, and Deuteronomy gives the other reading an idiom. No grade here rests on that verse alone.
• Stated: the texts read for purgatory. Paul writes of a builder whose work “is burned up”: “He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.” (1 Corinthians 3:15), on the day that “will bring it to light” (3:13). Of one sin Jesus says that it “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come” (Matthew 12:32). 2 Maccabees, an early reader, says that Judas “made a reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin” (12:45, KJV).
• Background (the Catholic Church). Those who die in grace “but still imperfectly purified” are assured of salvation, “but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1030); “The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.” (1031). It quotes a reading of Matthew 12:32: “From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.”
• Inference. In the books the BSB prints, the fire of 1 Corinthians 3:15 falls on “the Day” and on the work, not between death and the resurrection, and Matthew 12:32 says of one sin that it is forgiven in neither age, not what is forgiven in the next. A purification between death and the resurrection is not stated there; it rests on 2 Maccabees and on readings of these two verses. Not shown.

At the end: heaven comes down.

• Stated. “For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.” (Isaiah 65:17); “a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). John sees “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” and hears, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them.” (Revelation 21:2–3). The prayer was “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), and the plan is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).
• Measured. New heavens and a new earth stand in four verses: Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1. Revelation 21:3’s “He will dwell” is σκηνώσει, the verb of John 1:14, where the Word “made His dwelling among us”; it stands in five New Testament verses. Eden’s tree of life (Genesis 2:9; 3:22, 24) stands in the city, its leaves “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2; also 2:7; 22:14, 19), and the Greek of Isaiah 65:22, in the chapter of the new heavens, gives God’s people “the days of the tree of life” where the Hebrew has the days of the tree (hāʿēṣ).
• Texts read the other way. “In My Father’s house are many rooms” (John 14:2); “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17); an inheritance “reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). Each ends, in its own passage, with the Lord coming or with what is kept being revealed: “I will come back and welcome you into My presence” (John 14:3); “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 4:16); “ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).
• Measured. 1 Thessalonians 4:17’s ‘to meet’ is εἰς ἀπάντησιν, a noun the New Testament has in three verses: the virgins go out to meet the bridegroom, “Come out to meet him!”, and go in with him (Matthew 25:6, 10); the brothers come out from Rome “to meet us” (Acts 28:15).
• Background: the rapture. One reading takes the meeting as a removal of believers from the earth before the Lord comes to it. Kevin Zuber argues for it: “Admittedly, Paul does not specify that the destination is heaven”, but the meeting “does indicate a sudden, unexpected removal of the believers away from the earth”. Michael Cosby finds (1994) that ἀπάντησις “was not a technical term and that all of the main elements of Hellenistic receptions are missing from 1 Thess 4:15-17”, so the noun alone does not say that those who meet the Lord come back with him.
• Inference. The end is not people leaving earth for heaven. It is heaven and earth joined, and God dwelling among people in a creation made new. Strong. Where the meeting in the air leads next, 1 Thessalonians 4:17 says only “And so we will always be with the Lord.”, and its passage has the Lord “descend from heaven” (4:16). Whether believers are first taken up to heaven for a time is a reading; on either reading the end is the city “coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2).

What it is.

• Stated. “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4); “No longer will there be any curse.” (22:3). Once “no one can see Me and live” (Exodus 33:20); then “They will see His face” (Revelation 22:4). Its heart is knowing God: “Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” (John 17:3); “we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). The raised “will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30), with bodies made “like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Beyond that: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
• Marriage. To “whose wife will she be of the seven?” (Matthew 22:28) the answer is “In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” (22:30), and Luke gives the ground: “they can no longer die” (Luke 20:36). A wife “is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives” (Romans 7:2). The marriage kept for the end is the Lamb’s: “the marriage of the Lamb has come” (Revelation 19:7). So a marriage of this age does not go on as a marriage in the resurrection, for that is the answer to the seven brothers. Follows. What the love of those once married becomes, the texts do not say. Open.
• Reunion. Paul writes so that the bereaved “will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13): the living “will be caught up together with them” (4:17), and “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (4:18). Many “will come from the east and the west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Matthew 8:11), each by name; Peter names Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:3–4); “then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12); and David says of his dead son, “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:23). Isaiah 65:17’s “The former things will not be remembered” is read by its own passage (R3): its hāriʾšōnôt is the word that in 65:16 qualifies “the former troubles” (haṣṣārôt hāriʾšōnôt), so what is forgotten is the troubles. That the raised are together and know one another: strong.
• The saved, and the lost they loved. God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4); “The sounds of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.” (Isaiah 65:19). The saved know the end of the lost: as they go forth, “they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me” (Isaiah 66:24), and in heaven a great multitude says of God, “For His judgments are true and just.” (Revelation 19:1–2). That the saved do not mourn is stated; how, when some they loved are lost, the texts do not say. Open.

The council made new.

• Stated. “To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne” (Revelation 3:21); “we will judge angels” (1 Corinthians 6:3). The redeemed come “from every tribe and tongue and people and nation”, made “a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10); “they will reign forever and ever” (22:5). “By its light the nations will walk” (21:24).
• Inference. The sequence begins with sons of God around the throne and the nations given to them (steps 2 and 8). It ends with the throne among people, the nations walking in its light, and seats beside the Son given to people from every nation the council once ruled. Moderate.

Heaven, in one sentence. In these texts heaven is the sky; the place of God’s throne and council, which cannot contain him; where the faithful dead are with Christ now (follows), aware there and waiting (moderate), and a purification after death is not shown; and at the end, heaven joined to a new earth (strong), where the raised do not marry (follows), are together and know one another (strong), and no longer mourn, God dwells with his people, they see his face, and they reign with the Son over healed nations. Its heart is to know God.

Step 8 keeps Israel as the LORD’s portion while the nations are allotted, and steps 12–17 give the nations to the Son. Most of Israel did not receive him, and later rabbinic texts speak against him. Read by their own words, the texts make Israel’s unbelief foretold, judged, partial and for a time; they speak of Israel rejected in judgment, never cast off for good, and of a call that is irrevocable; they save no one, Jew or Gentile, apart from Christ; and they give the election of one people as the way the nations are blessed (strong in the canon; moderate in the Hebrew alone). The Jewish readings of the same texts, Isaiah’s servant as Israel, the Messiah’s works still undone and forgiveness on repentance, are set out in their own terms beside the texts’ answers.

What four passages of the Talmud say of Jesus.

• Stated (the Babylonian Talmud). A baraita in Sanhedrin 43a: “On Passover Eve they hung … Jesus the Nazarene”, and beforehand “a crier went out before him … forty days”: “Jesus the Nazarene is going out to be stoned because he practiced sorcery, incited … and led the Jewish people astray. Anyone who knows … acquit him should come … and teach … on his behalf.” Sanhedrin 107b repeats the charge, “Jesus performed sorcery, incited … and led Israel astray”, in a story told against his teacher: “Always have the left … drive … away and the right draw … near”, “unlike Yehoshua ben Peraḥya, who pushed away Jesus the Nazarene with his two hands.” Sotah 47a tells the same story. In Gittin 57a, raised “through necromancy”, he says of Israel, “Their welfare you shall seek, their misfortune you shall not seek”; asked his punishment, he answers, “with boiling excrement. As the Master said: Anyone who mocks the words of the Sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement.” The passage closes, “Come … see the difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the nations of the world.” All are quoted from the William Davidson edition’s translation, without the editor’s added explanation.
• Measured. At Gittin 57a the Davidson edition’s Aramaic names Jesus the Nazarene; in the same sentence the text at Wikisource prints ‘to Yeshu’ in brackets and ‘to the sinners of Israel’ in parentheses. ‘The sinners of Israel’ is also the passage’s own phrase, in its closing line.
• Background (Cecini; the Jerusalem Talmud). Of some such passages Ulisse Cecini writes that “either they have disappeared from printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud, from early-modern to modern times, or their open anti-Christian content has been replaced by a more neutral formulation” (Henoch 40, 2018). The story of Sanhedrin 107b is one “which is preserved only in three manuscripts and two printed editions, i.e. Barco and Venice, but has disappeared from the Vilna edition”. It is set “When King Yannai was killing the Sages”, a king “who reigned from 103 to 76 BC”: “It is clear that there is a chronological problem in putting a story about Jesus of Nazareth into this time.” Christians, Cecini adds, “referred it to Jesus Christ, even though it may refer to another figure of the same name who lived in the time of King Yannai.” The Jerusalem Talmud tells the Alexandria story of “Jehudah ben Ṭabbai”, and names no student: “One of his students told him, her eye is damaged.” (Hagigah 2:2, tr. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer).
• The texts. His opponents brought the same charges in his lifetime: “Only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, does this man drive out demons.” (Matthew 12:24); “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:30); “No, He deceives the people.” (John 7:12); and after his death, “that deceiver said” (Matthew 27:63). The Gospels record the dispute over “the tradition of the elders”: “You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:5, 8). In John he is condemned on “the day of Preparation for the Passover” (John 19:14). And he foretold it for his own: “If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!” (Matthew 10:25). His answer to the charge is set out under Demons and possession.
• Inference. The Talmud’s charges are the Gospels’ charges, answered from the other side: deeds ascribed to sorcery, a teacher who mocked the words of the Sages, a death on the eve of Passover. Peter Schäfer reads them so; as his publisher puts it, “these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels—especially Matthew and John—and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives” (Jesus in the Talmud, Princeton University Press, 2007), a reading the publisher calls “A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus”. The passages are no premise (R1). As a witness to how the Babylonian Talmud answered the Gospel story, moderate: Schäfer’s reading has a rival in the older scholarship, and whether the Jesus of Sanhedrin 107b and Sotah 47a is Jesus of Nazareth is a reading (Cecini; the Jerusalem Talmud, above). As an independent witness to the events, weak: on Schäfer’s reading they parody the Gospels, and they differ from them on who put him to death and how, sentenced to stoning and hung, where the Gospels have him crucified under Pilate, and, in Sanhedrin 107b, on when he lived.

Israel’s unbelief, in the texts.

• Stated. “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” (John 1:11). Israel’s own scriptures foretold it, as John says: “they still did not believe in Him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet” (John 12:37–38, quoting Isaiah 53:1); “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” (Psalm 118:22), which Peter turns on the council: “This Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’” (Acts 4:11). Paul: “But not all of them welcomed the good news.” (Romans 10:16); “What Israel was seeking, it failed to obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened” (11:7); “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, to this very day.” (11:8), as Moses had told Israel in Moab: “Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.” (Deuteronomy 29:4). “For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant.” (2 Corinthians 3:14).
• Isaiah 53, read otherwise. In Isaiah the speakers of “Who has believed our message?” (53:1) follow the nations and their kings: “so He will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of Him. For they will see what they have not been told” (52:15). And Isaiah names the servant Israel: “But you, O Israel, My servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen” (41:8; also 44:1, 21; 45:4); “You are My Servant, Israel, in whom I will display My glory.” (49:3). Rashi reads the song so, as Marty Lockshin translates him: “This prophet refers to the Jewish people in the singular, as if they were one person”, and of the song’s speakers, “This is what the gentiles say to each other” (Parshanut and Polemics IV, Torah in Motion). The reading is old: Origen met it in debate, “that these predictions bore reference to the whole people, regarded as one individual, and as being in a state of dispersion and suffering” (Against Celsus 1.55, ANF). On it the servant is Israel, and the unbelievers of 53:1 are the nations.
• Inference. In Isaiah alone the servant is named Israel (49:3), yet sent “to bring Jacob back to Him” (49:5), and “stricken for the transgression of My people” (53:8): a servant who is Israel and a servant set apart from Israel, and the text does not settle which the song means: a reading. The canon names him: asked “who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”, Philip “told him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:34–35), and John applies 53:1 to the unbelief of his own people (John 12:37–38). Within this study’s scope that naming counts as stated; that Isaiah’s text alone makes the unbelievers of 53:1 Israel is not shown.
• Not all. The first believers were Jews: “about three thousand were added to the believers that day” (Acts 2:41); “how many thousands of Jews have believed” (21:20). Paul counts himself among them: “I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.” (Romans 11:1), once a man who “persecuted the church of God” (Galatians 1:13); and “at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5).
• Judged, not passed over. “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit” (Matthew 21:43), said to “the chief priests and Pharisees”, who “knew that Jesus was speaking about them” (21:45); “Look, your house is left to you desolate.” (23:38), with an end in view: “you will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (23:39); “because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (Luke 19:44); “Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (21:24); “severity to those who fell” (Romans 11:22). Privilege brings priority in both: “trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek”, “but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Greek” (2:9–10).
• The broken covenant. It was not passed over: the new covenant is promised in place of “a covenant they broke” (Jeremiah 31:32), and “Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin” (Romans 3:9). Nor is it the last word: the new covenant is made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah”, and “I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more” (31:31, 34); “this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins” (Romans 11:27). “Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Certainly not!” (3:3–4).
• Grief, not contempt. “I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” (Romans 9:2); “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is for their salvation” (10:1); “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34, a saying the SBL Greek text marks as a textual variant); “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.” (Acts 3:17).
• The Jewish reason, in its own terms. The prophets mark the Messiah’s days by what is done in them: “Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.” (Isaiah 2:4); “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is full of water” (11:9); “No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’” (Jeremiah 31:34); Israel in its land under “My servant David”, and “I will set My sanctuary among them forever” (Ezekiel 37:24–26); “David will never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel”, nor the Levites a man to offer (Jeremiah 33:17–18). These are not done; so, on this reading, the Messiah has not come.
• The texts’ answer. The New Testament puts these works at his return: “Heaven must take Him in until the time comes for the restoration of all things, which God announced long ago through His holy prophets.” (Acts 3:21); “He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him.” (Hebrews 9:28); and to “will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” it answers, “It is not for you to know times or seasons” (Acts 1:6–7). First comes what the prophets foretold, “that His Christ would suffer” (3:18); the priesthood and the offerings are taken up under Old covenant and new. In the canon the works not yet done are the works of his return, and they do not contradict his coming: no conflict. Read in the prophets alone, where no second coming is stated, the objection stands: a reading of those books alone, outside this study’s scope.

Not cast off forever.

• Stated. “I ask then, did God reject His people? Certainly not!” (Romans 11:1); “God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew.” (11:2); “did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Certainly not! However, because of their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous.” (11:11). The branches “were broken off because of unbelief” (11:20), and “if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.” (11:23). “A hardening in part has come to Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (11:25–26). “Regarding the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but regarding election, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable.” (11:28–29). What is theirs: “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory and the covenants; theirs the giving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ” (9:4–5).
• Rejected in judgment, not forever. “So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel.” (2 Kings 17:20); “My God will reject them because they have not obeyed Him” (Hosea 9:17); Paul himself speaks of “their rejection” and “their acceptance” (Romans 11:15). Not for good: “Only if the heavens above could be measured and the foundations of the earth below searched out would I reject all of Israel’s descendants because of all they have done” (Jeremiah 31:37); “For the Lord will not cast us off forever.” (Lamentations 3:31).
• Measured. The Hebrew māʾas, ‘reject’, with ‘all the seed of Israel’ stands in two verses: 2 Kings 17:20, of the exile, and Jeremiah 31:37, which denies it for good. Romans 11:1–2’s verb, ἀπώσατο, ‘rejected’, is the Greek Old Testament’s word both for rejection in judgment, ἀπώσεται αὐτοὺς ὁ θεός, ‘God will reject them’ (Hosea 9:17), and for its limit: οὐκ ἀπώσεται κύριος τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ, ‘the Lord will not reject his people’ (Greek Psalm 93:14, 94:14 in English Bibles; 1 Samuel 12:22), and οὐκ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἀπώσεται κύριος, ‘the Lord will not reject forever’ (Lamentations 3:31). Romans 11:15’s ‘rejection’, ἀποβολή, stands elsewhere in the New Testament only in Acts 27:22, “loss”, and its ‘acceptance’, πρόσλημψις, only here. Romans 11:10’s “forever” renders διὰ παντός, ‘continually’, the King James “alway”. ἀμεταμέλητος, ‘irrevocable’, stands in two New Testament verses: Romans 11:29, and 2 Corinthians 7:10, of a repentance “without regret”. In Romans, Ἰσραήλ stands eleven times, in nine verses, all in chapters 9–11. And Paul reads Israel’s unbelief through the Song of step 8: Romans 10:19 quotes Deuteronomy 32:21, “I will make you jealous by those who are not a nation”; its verb, παραζηλόω, returns in Romans 11:11 and 11:14 and stands elsewhere in the New Testament only in 1 Corinthians 10:22; and Romans 15:10 quotes 32:43, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people.”
• Ruled out. That God has rejected his people for good, or ended its call: “did God reject His people? Certainly not!”; “irrevocable” (Romans 11:1, 29; Jeremiah 31:37). The reading sets one stated text against another (R2).
• Salvation apart from Christ: the Jewish reading, and the texts. The Hebrew Bible states forgiveness and life on repentance, and names no mediator: “But if the wicked man turns from all the sins he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die.” (Ezekiel 18:21; also 33:14–16); “Bring your confessions and return to the LORD.” (Hosea 14:2); Nineveh is spared when God sees “that they had turned from their evil ways” (Jonah 3:10); “By loving devotion and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for” (Proverbs 16:6); “But Israel will be saved by the LORD with an everlasting salvation” (Isaiah 45:17); and the new covenant ends, “For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34). Read alone, these books give Israel salvation by the LORD on repentance. The New Testament states the other side: “Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”, said to the “Rulers and elders of the people” (Acts 4:8, 12); “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6); the branches “were broken off because of unbelief”, and Paul prays “for their salvation” (Romans 10:1). And it joins the two: God “had passed over the sins committed beforehand”, in his forbearance, until he presented the atoning sacrifice (Romans 3:25–26), and Christ “has died to redeem them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). In the canon read as one, the forgiveness the prophets state is the forgiveness the cross grounds, and the two sets of texts do not contradict each other: reconciled in the texts. That Israel is saved apart from Christ: ruled out, by Acts 4:12 and John 14:6. Read without the New Testament, the prophets’ texts stand as the Jewish reading states them: a reading of those books alone, outside this study’s scope.
• Texts read the other way. Some texts are read as God’s turning from Israel for good. “the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12), while “many will come from the east and the west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (8:11); of those from whom the churches “in Judea” suffered, “the utmost wrath has come upon them” (1 Thessalonians 2:14–16); “Expel the slave woman and her son”, said of “the present-day Jerusalem” (Galatians 4:25, 30); “He has made the first one obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13), of the covenant, where the new is made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” (8:8); “a synagogue of Satan”, of “those who falsely claim to be Jews” (Revelation 2:9; 3:9); “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25), answered at Pentecost, “This promise belongs to you and your children” (Acts 2:39); “Everyone who does not listen to Him will be completely cut off from among his people.” (Acts 3:23), spoken to those who are “sons of the prophets and of the covenant” (3:25). John 8:44’s “You belong to your father, the devil” is said to those “trying to kill Me” (8:37), in the Gospel where “salvation is from the Jews” (4:22). Other texts widen the name: “even to the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16); “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” (Romans 9:6); “a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly” (2:29); “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed” (Galatians 3:29). Each judges a generation, its leaders, or an unbelieving part, or names an Israel within Israel; none says that God rejected his people for good.
• Where readers differ: whom “all Israel” includes. That it is the people of Israel, set against the Gentiles in the sentence before (11:25), is strong: every other Ἰσραήλ in Romans names the people or a remnant within it, and the passage looks to their “fullness” and “acceptance” (11:12, 15). Whether it is the whole people at the end, when the hardening that lasts “until” is over, or the elect remnant through the ages, “a remnant chosen by grace” (11:5), is a reading.
• The rival, in its strongest form. That “all Israel” is the whole people of God, Jew and Gentile, is Calvin’s reading: “I extend the word Israel to all the people of God” (Commentary on Romans, at 11:26). It rests on Romans itself: “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” (9:6); “a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly” (2:29); Gentiles called “‘My People’ who are not My people” (9:24–25); one olive tree, into which they are grafted (11:17–24); and οὕτως in “And so all Israel will be saved”, which names a manner, ‘in this way’, not a time. Galatians 6:16 adds “the Israel of God”, where the BSB’s “even” renders καί, ‘and’, as the King James has it, “and upon the Israel of God”. The answer stands in the same chapters. The sentence sets Israel against the Gentiles, “A hardening in part has come to Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in”, and its next clause gives no sign that the name has changed its sense. Romans 9:6 divides Israel within Israel, Isaac from Ishmael and Jacob from Esau (9:7–13), and takes in no Gentile; when Paul turns to the Gentiles he gives them Hosea’s ‘My people’, and in the next verse speaks “concerning Israel” of “the number of the Israelites” (9:25–27). Romans 2:29 speaks of a Jew, not of Israel. The grafted tree stays “their own olive tree” for the natural branches (11:24), and those who are “enemies on your account” yet “loved on account of the patriarchs” (11:28) are Israel, set against the Gentiles Paul addresses (11:13). Read of manner, οὕτως fits the people as well. Weaker.

One tree.

• Stated. “you, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root” (Romans 11:17); “do not boast over those branches. If you do, remember this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” (11:18); “Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.” (11:20); “how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!” (11:24). “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one” (Ephesians 2:14); “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus” (3:6). The city’s gates are “inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel”, and its foundations bear “the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:12, 14).
• Inference. The nations are grafted into Israel’s tree; they do not replace it, and branches broken off can be grafted in again. Follows from Romans 11:17–24.

Why one people.

• Stated. Not for merit: “The LORD did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the LORD loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers” (Deuteronomy 7:7–8); “it is not because of your righteousness” (9:6). Freely, and still without partiality: “He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples” (10:15), and two verses on, God is “showing no partiality and accepting no bribe” (10:17); “before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand”, with Paul’s own question, “Is God unjust? Certainly not!” (Romans 9:11, 14). Of the nations: “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3; step 9), which Paul reads so: “The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (Galatians 3:8); and to the Servant named “Israel” (Isaiah 49:3): “I will also make You a light for the nations, to bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.” (49:6). With a stricter judgment: “Only you have I known from all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (Amos 3:2). And judgment without partiality: God “will repay each one according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6); “For God does not show favoritism.” (2:11); “God does not show favoritism, but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:34–35); “Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too” (Romans 3:29).
• Measured. The promise uses two stems of bārak, ‘bless’: the Niphal, wĕnibrĕkû, in Genesis 12:3, 18:18 and 28:14, its only verses in the Hebrew Bible, and the Hithpael, wĕhitbārăkû, in 22:18 and 26:4. The Hithpael stands in four more verses, and in one of them the BSB itself has the reflexive, “he invokes a blessing on himself” (Deuteronomy 29:19, 29:18 in the Hebrew); the Jewish Publication Society (1917) renders Genesis 26:4 “by thy seed shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves”. Of the first stem, John H. Walton: “a niphal form, which is usually passive”; of the second, “A hithpael is often reflexive—an action one does to oneself.” (Zondervan Academic, 2008). To bless oneself by a name is to take it as the measure of blessing, as in “By you shall Israel pronounce this blessing: ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’” (Genesis 48:20). The Greek has one passive for both, ἐνευλογηθήσονται, ‘will be blessed’, in all five verses, and so does Galatians 3:8; Acts 3:25 has it too, where the SBL text marks a variant on the verb.
• Inference. In the sequence, the portion kept at the allotment is the line through which the nations come back: the promise of step 9; the Son born of Israel, for “from them proceeds the human descent of Christ” (Romans 9:5); and at the end “Egypt My people” beside “Israel My inheritance” (Isaiah 19:25; step 17). Israel was chosen for the blessing of the nations, on the promise made to Abraham and repeated to Isaac and to Jacob, whose name Israel bears, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (Genesis 28:14; 12:3; 18:18; 26:4). In the canon, strong: Galatians 3:8 and Acts 3:25 read the promise in the passive, of the Gentiles, “All nations will be blessed through you”. In the Hebrew alone, moderate: the Niphal of 12:3, 18:18 and 28:14 is usually passive, but the Hithpael of 22:18 and 26:4 makes the nations bless themselves by his line, a byword of blessing rather than its channel, though Walton reads the Hithpael too as a further way the blessing reaches the nations through Abraham’s family. Galatians’ reading is stated for Galatians, and within this study’s scope for the canon; it is not the Hebrew of Genesis. Isaiah 49:6 gives the light for the nations to the Servant, whom 49:5 sends “to bring Jacob back to Him”, and Acts 13:47 applies it to Paul and Barnabas: support for the task, not for the people’s choosing. The choice is free love, and the judgment is without partiality (Deuteronomy 10:15, 17; Romans 9:11–14; 2:6–11): God chooses whom he will for a task, and judges each one by deeds. That this election answers the allotment, through step 9 and Isaiah 19:25, is moderate, as those steps grade it.

Israel today.

• Open. The texts name no modern state, and Romans 11 speaks of a people, not a government. Whether the return of Jews to the land in modern times fulfills a text such as “the Lord will extend His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people” (Isaiah 11:11), the texts do not say; any such identification is a reading.
• No paradox. Present unbelief and abiding election are stated together, in two respects: “Regarding the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but regarding election, they are loved” (Romans 11:28). One people said to be enemies in one respect and loved in another is not a contradiction, and the hardening is “in part” and lasts “until” (11:25). The texts also give the unbelief a place in the plan: “because of their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous” (11:11); “their trespass means riches for the world” (11:12); “For God has consigned everyone to disobedience so that He may have mercy on everyone.” (11:32). Paul raises the objection himself, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?”, and answers with the potter, not a rule: “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Romans 9:19–20). How the plan and the choices work together is the mystery set out under Mysteries (3), not a contradiction. Follows.

Israel, in one sentence. In these texts Israel’s rejection of Jesus was foretold, as John reads Isaiah, and judged, yet it is partial and for a time; God rejected his people in judgment but not for good, and his gifts and call are irrevocable, so that broken branches can be grafted in again by faith; no one, Jew or Gentile, is saved apart from Christ, and the forgiveness the prophets promise on repentance is, in the canon, grounded in his death; the Jewish readings, the servant as Israel and the Messiah’s works not yet done, are readings of the prophets alone, which the canon answers by naming the servant and setting those works at his return; one people was chosen, not for its merit, for the blessing of all the families of the earth, which is strong in the canon and moderate in the Hebrew alone; and that “all Israel” is the people is strong, against the reading that makes it the whole people of God, while whether at the end or through the ages is a reading.

A mystery, in this document’s sense, is a question that consistent texts leave open (Mystery is not paradox, under God’s attributes); the New Testament’s μυστήριον, in its main use, is rather a truth once hidden and now made known (Colossians 1:26; Ephesians 3:9). Each is taken here as far as the texts go: what they state, what they rule out, and the core they leave open.

1. How evil began in a good creation.

• Stated. “God made men upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). God “cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone”; “each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed”, and “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin” (James 1:13–15). Of the devil, Paul names conceit: a new convert “may become conceited and fall under the same condemnation as the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6).
• Ruled out. That God tempts to evil (James 1:13), with 2 Samuel 24:1 read with 1 Chronicles 21:1 under R2, how the LORD’s anger and the adversary’s inciting share that act being a reading (Good, evil and free will); and that evil is a power beside God: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God but Me.” (Isaiah 45:5).
• Open. Why a creature made upright first chose otherwise. The texts name the desire and the conceit (James 1:14–15; 1 Timothy 3:6), not why they arose.

2. Why evil lasts as long, and weighs as much, as it does.

• Stated. It serves purposes: “God intended for good” (Genesis 50:20); “so that the works of God would be displayed in him” (John 9:3); “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28). It has limits: “you must not lay a hand on the man himself” (Job 1:12), though the same leave let his sons and daughters die (1:18–19), and the LORD calls the whole “to ruin him without cause” (2:3); “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God shares it: “He Himself suffered when He was tempted” (Hebrews 2:18), and to Saul, “why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4). The creation itself “was subjected to futility … in hope” (Romans 8:20). It ends (Revelation 21:4), and it is weighed against what follows: “our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
• Ruled out. That a good and almighty God must end every evil at once (God’s attributes, 4; check 4c).
• Open. The reason in each case, and the measure of the whole; the argument from evil as evidence, and death before man, are weighed under Good, evil and free will. Job is answered with questions, not reasons (Job 38–41), and ends: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:3)

3. God’s plan and human choice.

• Stated. Both, often in one sentence: “God’s set plan and foreknowledge” and “the hands of the lawless” (Acts 2:23); “They carried out what Your hand and will had decided beforehand would happen.” (4:28); “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, “For it is God who works in you to will and to act” (Philippians 2:12–13); “The king’s heart is a waterway in the hand of the LORD; He directs it where He pleases.” (Proverbs 21:1). Yet “Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19), and his longing can be refused: “but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37).
• Ruled out. Each of these contradicts a text: that those who do what God planned are not guilty; that one act has one intent (check 4n). That what God wishes he also decrees contradicts 1 Timothy 2:4 and Matthew 23:37 in their plain sense (check 4f); Augustine’s reading keeps it by reading them otherwise (Hell under the four attributes, 2). Two more are ruled out only on a reading of ‘choose’: that God cannot know a free choice before it is made, if Peter’s foretold denials were open both ways (Matthew 26:34; Acts 2:23 alone does not decide it, Good, evil and free will); and that only one outcome was ever possible, if Deuteronomy 30:19’s ‘choose’ needs two open outcomes (4o).
• Open. The mechanism: how his plan works within a real choice. A plan fixed whichever way the choice goes, with a choice that could go either way, would contradict itself; a plan that answers to the choice, as foreknowledge does, or a ‘choose’ that needs no two open outcomes, does not (4n). Accounts that keep both sides are consistent, and the texts choose none of them.

4. The Father, the Son and the Spirit.

• Stated. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.” (Deuteronomy 6:4), which Paul writes as “one God, the Father” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6; Gap 3). “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1); “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.” (1:3); “the glory I had with You before the world existed” (17:5); “as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself” (5:26); “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). To lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie “to God” (Acts 5:3–4), and disciples are baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
• Measured. John 1:1 puts the article on God in “with God” (πρὸς τὸν θεόν), not in “was God” (θεὸς ἦν). It says the Word ‘was’ (ἦν, four times in 1:1–2), and all things ‘came to be’ (ἐγένετο, 1:3). In “I and the Father are one” (10:30) the verb is plural, ἐσμεν, ‘we are’, and ‘one’ is neuter, ἕν: one thing, not one person. Matthew 28:19 has one name, τὸ ὄνομα, for the three. θεότης, ‘Deity’, stands in the New Testament only in Colossians 2:9.
• Measured. John 17:11 and 22 use the same neuter ἕν of the disciples, “so that they may be one as We are one”: ἕν marks a unity, not by itself its kind.
• Ruled out. That the Word is the same person as the Father, by John 1:1’s “with God”.
• Inference: that the Word did not come to be. John 1:1–2 says the Word ‘was’ in the beginning, where all things ‘came to be’ (1:3; measured above). Jesus sets the same two verbs apart, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58), γενέσθαι against εἰμί, and takes the LORD’s title, “I am the First and the Last” (Revelation 1:17; 2:8; 22:13; Isaiah 44:6), from which step 1 infers that the LORD is uncreated. Strong. John 1:3 rules it out as well if its ‘all things’ takes in the Word, for all that came to be came through him, and nothing comes to be through itself (check 4p). A reading that excepts him, as made first and the rest through him, gives John 1:3 a limit like that of 1 Corinthians 15:27, “this clearly does not include the One who put everything under Him”; but Paul states his limit, and John states none (R3). On John’s words as they stand, ruled out.
• Excluded on premises graded under God’s attributes, 5, not by a text alone. That ‘the LORD’ names one individual, which would make the Son the Father, is excluded by the name given to the Son, which is strong, with John 1:1’s “with God” (check 4m); that the Father is greater in nature, by the reading that the Son bears the name as the one God whom the Father and he both are (Gap 3); a reader who holds that the name was given to the Son, “the name above all names” (Philippians 2:9), without his being the LORD, reads Philippians 2:10–11 and Jude 5 otherwise.
• Texts read the other way. Proverbs 8:22, “The LORD created me as His first course”, where Wisdom speaks; Brenton’s English of the Greek has “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways”, and the King James “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way”. Colossians 1:15, “the firstborn over all creation”. Revelation 3:14, “the Originator of God’s creation”.
• Measured. Proverbs 8:22’s verb is qānâ, the verb of “Get wisdom” (4:5, 7) and of God as “Creator of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:19, 22; Deuteronomy 32:6); the Greek has κτίζω, ‘made’. Colossians 1:16 opens with ὅτι, ‘for’: “For in Him all things were created”, and 1:18 calls him “the beginning and firstborn from among the dead”; Psalm 89:27 makes ‘firstborn’ a rank, “I will indeed appoint him as My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” Revelation 3:14’s word is ἀρχή, the word of God’s own title, “the Beginning and the End” (21:6), which Christ also takes (22:13).
• Inference. Read as ‘the first thing made’, each of the three would set the Son among the things that came to be, against John 1:1–3 and 8:58 (above), if Proverbs 8 speaks of the Son. Read by their own passages, they do not: Colossians gives the firstborn as the one in whom all things were created, and a rank; Revelation’s ἀρχή is the source, as the BSB renders it; and Proverbs 8 is Wisdom’s speech, which the New Testament nowhere quotes of the Son, and its verb is the one Proverbs uses for getting wisdom and Genesis for the Creator, so that the verb does not decide. A reading.
• Open. How three are one God, and how the Son is both God and man (God’s attributes, 7). The texts mark the limit: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son” (Matthew 11:27).

5. The resurrection body.

• Stated. “Touch Me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39); he “took it and ate it in front of them” (24:43). “What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable.” (1 Corinthians 15:42); “it is raised in glory” (15:43); “it is raised a spiritual body” (15:44), as a plant from “just a seed” (15:37); “like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
• Ruled out. No body at all (Luke 24:39), and the perishable body unchanged: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50).
• Open. “what we will be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2). To “With what kind of body will they come?” (1 Corinthians 15:35) Paul answers with a seed, not a description. What makes the one raised the one who died, the texts give only in the seed’s one subject, “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (15:44), and in the risen Jesus’ wounds, “look at My hands” (John 20:27).

6. Between death and the resurrection.

• Stated. “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7); “today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43); “to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed” (Philippians 1:23). The souls under the altar cry out and are told “to rest a little while longer” (Revelation 6:9–11).
• Open. How a person lives without the body until the resurrection. Paul hopes to be clothed, and “not be found naked” (2 Corinthians 5:3–4); the texts say no more.

7. The end of the lost. Not a question of how, but one the texts leave short of proof.

• Stated. Judgment by deeds and by degree; the lake, “the second death” (Hell under the four attributes). That universal restoration is ruled out follows, from the texts stated there.
• Open. Whether the second death ends the lost or torments them without end. Read in their plain sense, the two lists of texts leave no answer; one must be read in a secondary sense, and the four rules do not say which. A reading. For the angels who sinned, torment without end is moderate; that no one condemned is restored is moderate.

8. Heaven, beyond what is stated.

• Stated. No death and no curse; “They will see His face” (Revelation 22:4); God dwells with his people (Heaven).
• Open. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9). How the saved mourn no more when some they loved are lost, the texts do not say (Heaven).

Further open questions.

• Those who never heard. “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law” (Romans 2:12); nations without the law “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts”, judged “on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Christ Jesus” (2:15–16). “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin.” (John 15:22). God “has not left Himself without testimony to His goodness” (Acts 14:17) and “overlooked the ignorance of earlier times” (17:30), yet “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (4:12). Open: each is judged through Christ by the light he had; whether, and how, any who never heard of Christ are saved through him, the texts do not say, and the churches’ answers are weighed under Salvation (5), a reading.
• Children who die. Israel’s children “who on that day did not know good from evil” were spared their fathers’ sentence (Deuteronomy 1:39). David said of his dead son, “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:23). “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). Open: no text states their end; that they are with God is a reading of these verses.
• The Spirit in the sequence. “the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:2); the Spirit comes at Pentecost (step 16), and “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14; step 17). Jesus drives out demons “by the Spirit of God” (Matthew 12:28; Demons and possession), and the Spirit knows “the thoughts of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Open: the Spirit’s part in the allotment and in the judging of the gods is not set out in the texts quoted here.
• Why the nations were allotted at all. God “determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands”, and “God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:26–27); for a time “He let all nations go their own way” (14:16). A purpose is stated, that they seek him, and is weighed under The One and the other (3) and Israel. Open: why the nations were set under heavenly powers (Joint 1) rather than ruled by God directly.
• The loyal angels. “Are not the angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14); “I am a fellow servant with you” (Revelation 22:9); “there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). Open: whether those who stayed can still fall.
• Animals. “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21); “The wolf will live with the lamb”, and “They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain” (Isaiah 11:6, 9); “O LORD, You preserve man and beast.” (Psalm 36:6). Ecclesiastes leaves the rest a question: “Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:21). Open: whether animals now living share in the freed creation. Whether their death before man was God’s ordering or came through sin is weighed under Good, evil and free will: a reading.
• Possession and the Spirit. Whether one in whom the Spirit dwells can be possessed: no text calls a believer possessed, and the texts that bear on it do not settle it. A reading (Demons and possession).
• Israel today. The texts name no modern state; whether the modern return fulfills a prophecy is a reading (Israel).
• Spirit and brain. How the spirit and the brain are joined, the texts do not say, and physics narrows the ways it could be without closing the question (Man). Open.
• Life on other worlds. The texts neither affirm nor deny it, and none has been found (Physics, 8). Open.

What this document grades rather than proves. Gap 2, the comparison with Ugarit, stays open; Joint 1’s rule and step 7’s link are moderate, so that the beginning as told, paired, ruled and after Babel, is a reading; Joint 2 is a reading; Joint 3 is moderate; Joint 4 and the answer to Gap 3 are strong in the canon, and which person each divine name denotes is a reading; that the Son bears the LORD’s name as the one God whom the Father and he both are is a reading (God’s attributes, 5; Gap 3); how God’s plan and human choice agree, the answer to foreknowledge in its strong form, the texts’ answer to evil as evidence, and whether death before man came through sin are readings (Good, evil and free will); that no one condemned is restored is moderate, the end of the lost is a reading, and the angels’ torment without end is moderate (Hell under the four attributes); who the beast and the false prophet are is a reading; where demons come from is a reading (Demons and possession); and whether “all Israel” is the people at the end or the remnant through the ages is a reading (Israel).

The limits of the method.

• The solver checks that the texts, as entered, hold together, and what follows from them. It cannot check that an entry reads its text rightly. Most of its checks record that the encoded readings agree and that an attack’s added premise does not; the deductions in 1a, 1c, 4b and 4p, and the contradictions in 4q and 4r, are paired with a control that drops a verse, a premise or a joint, and the result changes, and in section 3 contrary entries must make the whole inconsistent (The sequence as a conditional proof). Each entry is graded and shown, and the table of failed joints says what changes if a reader rejects one (The sequence as a conditional proof, If a joint fails).
• The method measures the Hebrew and the Greek but quotes English, and a translation can carry a reading of its own, as the BSB’s ‘separated’ in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 does (Hell under the four attributes).
• The canon is read as one (rule R1). Ancient writers outside it are witnesses to how the texts were read, never premises.
• Some ancient witnesses are quoted in modern translation; each translation is named in Sources.
• A Course in Miracles claims Jesus as its author. On the texts as premises (R1) the claim fails. The Course says, “The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did.” (T-3.I.1:2); the Jesus of the texts says of his blood, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28), and of himself that he came “to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45); and “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). Follows, on R1. Whether the texts’ reports of Jesus are true is the premise of this document, not a result of it.

What it is.

• Its publisher. “A Course in Miracles was ‘scribed’ by Dr. Schucman between 1965 and 1972 through a process of inner dictation.” “The first edition of A Course in Miracles is copyrighted and published in the late summer of 1975.” For the second edition (1992), “Ken Wapnick reviewed previous drafts of the Course in order to correct typos and insert material that had been inadvertently omitted from the First Edition.”
• Its earlier forms. Helen Schucman’s shorthand notebooks, as Doug Thompson transcribes them (cited N, notebook and page); the typescript he cites as the Urtext (Ur, page); and a later edit of the Text, printed in the Sparkly Edition, whose preface says, “The edit of the Text used herein is Bill’s, as he was directed by Jesus.” The published Course is cited by its own references (T Text, W Workbook, C Clarification of Terms).

What it teaches, beside the texts.

• Where it agrees. “God is but Love, and therefore so am I.” (W-pI.rV.in.4:3) shares its first clause with “God is love” (1 John 4:8); its “no other gods” shares 1 Corinthians 8:4’s “there is no God but one”; and its God who does not judge shares John 5:22’s “the Father judges no one”. It parts from the texts in the rest of each: “so am I”, the demons behind the idols, and the Son to whom judgment is given.
• Its own two levels. The Course does not contradict itself on the separation. It occurred “over millions of years” (T-2.VIII.2:5) and “never occurred” (T-6.II.10:7), because “The separation is a system of thought real enough in time, though not in eternity.” (T-3.VII.3:2) On the separation, its contradiction is with the texts, not within itself.

Adam’s sleep.

• The Course. “Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up.” (T-2.I.3:6)
• Measured. True of the word: Genesis says that Noah, Jacob and Pharaoh awoke (yqṣ: 9:24; 28:16; 41:4, 7, 21), and never says it of Adam. Untrue of the story: after the sleep the man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23), and “Adam had relations with his wife Eve” (4:1).
• Where the point came from. The Urtext credits it to Mary Baker Eddy: “Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up.” (Ur 65). Thompson prints the paragraph as an Urtext insert; it is not in the notebooks, and his transcription names Eddy nowhere else. Her name is gone from the Sparkly Edition’s Text and from the published Text as searched (to T-23.II) and Workbook, and the point remains. Eddy’s own book calls the sleep “the Adam-dream” (Science and Health 306:32), and holds that it goes on: “Even so goes on the Adam-belief, of which mortal and material life is the dream.” (556:22–24); in its full text none of the 46 sentences naming Adam speaks of his waking.
• Inference. The claim holds of a word and fails of the story. Eddy’s book holds that the Adam-belief goes on, but nowhere makes the textual point that Genesis never wakes him. Weak.

The early dictation.

• Stated in the notebooks. “The ‘Princes of this World’ are princes only because they are really angels.” (N 4:133). Of Lucifer: “He literally PROJECTED himself from Heaven.” (N 4:124). And: “Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false.” (N 4:130)
• Measured. None of the three, and no ‘princes’ or ‘Lucifer’ at all, stands in the Sparkly Edition (688 files of Text, Workbook, Manual and Preface) or in the published Text (to T-23.II) and Workbook.
• Inference. The first agrees with this document’s reading of the rulers as heavenly powers (Joint 1, step 8); the third denies what Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 state. Neither stands in the published Text as searched (to T-23.II) or Workbook. Follows, from the passages compared.

Result.

• Inference. The Course is not a reading of these texts but another set of premises: a world God did not make, a fall that God does not know, a devil who is a belief, gods who do not exist, a God who does not judge, an atonement without the cross. Each contradicts a stated text; with the texts as premises (rule R1), it cannot stand beside them and is set aside. It cannot close a gap in the sequence, because it denies what the sequence rests on. Follows.
• Its author. Its claim to Jesus’ authorship fails on the texts as premises (Mysteries and open questions, the limits of the method).

What they are.

• Hermes and Thoth. Lactantius, following Cicero, tells of a fifth Mercury who “fled into Egypt, and gave laws and letters to the Egyptians.” Of him: “The Egyptians call him Thoth”. Lactantius adds that he was learned “so that the knowledge of many subjects and arts acquired for him the name of Trismegistus.” (Divine Institutes 1.6, ANF).
• The Hermetic writings. Greek treatises gathered as the Corpus Hermeticum, the first of them the Poimandres, and a Latin dialogue, the Asclepius, which Augustine quotes. They present themselves as the wisdom of ancient Egypt. The date of the Corpus Hermeticum, as a reviewer of Florian Ebeling’s history of Hermeticism sums up its account: “Isaac Casaubon had demonstrated in 1614 that the Corpus Hermeticum was not a product of the most remote antiquity but was composed pseudepigraphically in the first centuries of the Christian era.” (Pieter W. van der Horst, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.11.04). They are quoted here in G. R. S. Mead’s translation (1906).
• The Emerald Tablet. A short alchemical text, quoted here in the translation of Steele and Singer (1928): “That which is above is like to that which is below”; “The father thereof is the Sun, the mother the Moon.” Its age: “Contrary to Renaissance beliefs, the work does not originate from ancient times”; “this short text has been traced back by German scholar Julius Ruska to 7th-9th century Arab treatise”; and “The text of the tablet was translated into Latin in the twelfth century by Hugo of Santalla.” (Georgiana Hedesan, University of Oxford, 2018).
• The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. A different book, credited to Doreal. Its preface dates the tablets: “Their antiquity is stupendous, dating back some 36,000 years B.C.”, tablets “which were left in the Great Pyramid in the custody of the pyramid priests”. A museum library describes it: “This book claims to be the writings of Thoth (associated with Hermes Trismegistus)”, and “Its connection with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus seems somewhat tenuous.” (Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, record 8391). This study found no witness to the tablets outside the book.

What they teach, beside the texts.

Two early readers.

• Lactantius took Hermes as a witness to the Son: that God has a Son “is shown not only by the unanimous utterances of the prophets, but also by the declaration of Trismegistus” (Divine Institutes 4.6), citing Hermes “in the book which is entitled The Perfect Word”, Mead’s Perfect Sermon, the Asclepius: “since He made the second God visible and sensible.”; then, “and He hallowed Him, and altogether loved Him as His own Son.”
• Augustine read the same book as a witness against the gods it praised. Hermes’s gods made by men are, he says, “that is to say, demons, through some art of I know not what description, bound by the chains of their own lusts to images.” He answers with the psalm as the Greek reads it: “For all the gods of the nations are demons: but the Lord made the heavens.” (City of God 8.24; Psalm 96:5, 95:5 in the Greek).
• Inference. Lactantius’s reading fails on the Asclepius’s own words: the second God it loves as a son is the Cosmos, “the second’s Cosmos”, a god that was made, “from Himself He made the second [God]”; the Son of the texts did not come to be (John 1:1–3; Mysteries and open questions, 4). Mead’s gloss, “the Logos as Cosmos”, makes the Logos the world, not the Word who became flesh. Augustine’s reading keeps to the words. Strong.

Result.

• The Hermetic writings. Not a reading of these texts but another set of premises: a second God who is the visible world, an archetypal Man co-equal with God, men immortal by an essence drawn from him, a fall that is a descent into nature, and the making of gods approved. Where they make the archetype of men God’s equal, they contradict a stated text (Isaiah 46:9; check 4q); with the texts as premises (rule R1), they cannot stand beside them and are set aside. Follows. Their immortality of men adds no second contradiction: it is derived, and 1 Timothy 6:16 reserves to God only the immortality had of oneself (4l). Where they agree in words (one God, a Word called Son of God, earth patterned on heaven), they add nothing the sequence needs.
• A witness for step 8. The Asclepius holds that the gods of the temples were the souls “of demons or of angels” joined to images. With Augustine’s answer, it is an ancient reader on the side of Deuteronomy 32:17 and 1 Corinthians 10:20: a witness, not a premise (rule R1; Demons and possession).
• The Emerald Tablet. Consistent as a figure of correspondence, a medieval text, and silent on the questions of the sequence. It settles nothing.
• The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. Its age rests on its own preface. Like the Urantia Book (Before Adam, J), it can be quoted for what it says, not counted as evidence.

The teachers known as the gnostics, from gnōsis, ‘knowledge’, gave the making of the world, the rule over it and the way out of it their own account. This section sets out what Irenaeus reports of them and tests it against the texts as premises (R1), as the Hermetic writings are tested.

What it is.

• The name. 1 Timothy closes by warning against “the opposing arguments of so-called ‘knowledge,’” (6:20). The teachers Irenaeus answers, about 185, made knowledge the way of salvation: “These hold that the knowledge of the unspeakable Greatness is itself perfect redemption.” (Against Heresies 1.21.4).
• The sources. Irenaeus reports their schools in order to refute them, so his account is a hostile witness. Their own books were later found in Coptic. Measured by others. Of one of them, the Apocryphon of John, “three were found in the Nag Hammadi codices discovered in 1945”; “All date to the 4th century and are Coptic translations from Greek.” (Wikipedia, “Apocryphon of John”). A book of that name “was referred to by Irenaeus in Adversus Haereses, written about 185”.
• The frame. The schools differ among themselves. This section takes the claims of theirs that bear on the sequence, in Irenaeus’s words, and leaves the books themselves aside (Result, below).

What they teach, beside the texts.

• Measured. γνῶσις, ‘knowledge’, stands in 28 verses of the New Testament, nine of them in 1 Corinthians, and in the Gospels only at Luke 1:77 and 11:52. The “so-called” of 1 Timothy 6:20 is ψευδωνύμου, and Ephesians 6:12’s “powers of this world’s darkness” are κοσμοκράτορας, ‘world-rulers’: each word stands in that verse alone. ἄρχων, ‘ruler’, stands with αἰών, ‘age’, in three verses: 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8, and Ephesians 2:2.

What the texts say to each.

• The maker of the world. Each school quoted here gives the making of the world to a power below the highest God, and three of them make that power ignorant of what is above it (1.5.3–4; 1.26.1; 1.29.4). The texts give it to the LORD, “I am the LORD, who has made all things” (Isaiah 44:24), whom Jesus calls “Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Matthew 11:25), and to the Son, “through whom He made the universe” (Hebrews 1:2; John 1:3). The maker knows what he made: “And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31); “His understanding has no limit.” (Psalm 147:5). Inference. A maker of the world other than the Father, or ignorant of his work, contradicts these texts: ruled out.
• The boast. Inference. The schools take the LORD’s “there is no other” (Isaiah 45:5) and his “jealous God” (Exodus 20:5) and give them to the ignorant ruler, so that the confession on which step 1 rests becomes a creature’s mistake. On the texts as premises the words are the LORD’s, said of himself as the maker of all (Isaiah 44:24; 45:5–7): ruled out. As witnesses, Irenaeus’s reports show that the denials were read in the second century as a claim to be God alone, the claim step 1 reads in them.
• The two gods. Inference. Jesus calls the God of Israel’s worship his Father (John 8:54), and the God who spoke through the prophets is the God who has spoken by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2); he is “the God of Abraham” (Matthew 22:32). Marcion’s two gods contradict these texts: ruled out.
• The rulers. Inference. Here gnosis and the sequence touch. The texts too have rulers over the world, “the rulers of this age” (1 Corinthians 2:8) and the world-rulers of Ephesians 6:12, and Basilides’ angels, who “made allotments among themselves of the earth and of those nations”, read Deuteronomy 32:8 as the sequence does, as a division of the nations among heavenly beings (Gap 3). They part at two points. In the texts the rulers are made (Colossians 1:16), and the nations are given them by the Most High, who is the LORD (Psalm 83:18; Gap 3), not taken by them; and the LORD is not one of them (Joint 4), where Basilides makes “the God of the Jews” their chief. So the sequence is not gnosis: it shares the allotment and denies a maker below God. Follows.
• Knowledge. Inference. The texts give knowledge of God a place in salvation, “eternal life, that they may know You” (John 17:3), and “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6), but under grace and love (Ephesians 2:8; 1 Corinthians 8:1), and offered to all: God “wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4). That some are saved by their nature, “not by means of conduct”, contradicts “And the dead were judged according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12): ruled out. The texts also give a mystery to the few, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you” (Mark 4:11), but to be told: “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops.” (Matthew 10:27). That the saving knowledge is to be kept for the few contradicts that command: ruled out.
• The flesh and the cross. Inference. Cerinthus’s Christ, who leaves Jesus before the passion, contradicts “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and “not by water alone, but by water and blood” (1 John 5:6), which John’s letters set against those who deny “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” (2 John 7): ruled out. Basilides’ Simon, crucified in Jesus’ place, contradicts Mark’s account, in which Simon carries the cross and “they crucified Him” (Mark 15:21–24): ruled out. Irenaeus reports that claim more than four centuries before the Quran’s ‘it appeared so’, which one reading takes the same way (The Quran on Jesus, His death and his raising).

Result.

• Gnosis. Not a reading of these texts but another set of premises: a maker of the world below the Father, the LORD’s “no other” made a boast, two gods, salvation by knowledge and by nature, and a Christ kept from the flesh and the cross. Each contradicts a stated text: ruled out, on the texts as premises (R1).
• A witness for the allotment. Basilides read the division of Deuteronomy 32:8 as the sequence does, the nations shared among heavenly beings, and made the God of the Jews one of them; the texts make the LORD the Most High who divides (Gap 3). Early readers found the allotment in the text, and divided on who the LORD is.
• What is not tested. The Nag Hammadi books themselves are not quoted here; their schools are given as Irenaeus, their opponent, reports them.

In one sentence. Gnosis, as Irenaeus reports it, gives the world to a lower maker who mistakes himself for the only God, sets the God of the Law against the Father of Jesus, saves by knowledge and by nature, and keeps Christ from the flesh and the cross, and each of these contradicts a stated text; Basilides’ angels, who share out the nations, show that the allotment of Deuteronomy 32:8 was read early, even by those who denied that the LORD is the Most High.

What it is.

• Its date and making. “Sometime around 610 C.E. an event occurred near the city of Mecca”, and “During the next 22 years, until his death in the city of Medina in 632 C.E., Muhammad continued to receive similar messages.” (Biblical Archaeology Society). Measured by others. Of two leaves with “parts of Suras (chapters) 18 to 20”: “Radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment on which the text is written to the period between AD 568 and 645”, “with 95.4% accuracy.” (University of Birmingham, 2015). Inference. Luke dates John’s preaching to Tiberius’s fifteenth year (3:1–3), and Tacitus the execution “during the reign of Tiberius” (Confirmations), whom Britannica calls “Second Roman emperor (ad 14–37)”: from a death no later than 37 to messages from about 610 is at least 573 years, some six centuries. Follows, as arithmetic.
• Its Jesus, in its own words. The Quran calls him “illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto Allah).” (3:45). He is born of a virgin (19:20), the Messiah, a word and a spirit from God (3:45; 4:171), a worker of signs (3:49), and taken up to God (4:158). Ma’ariful-Qur’an adds his return: by the Day of Judgment, “after he has descended down from the heaven, he would have had his natural and real death.” (Mufti Muhammad Shafi Usmani, on 5:116).
• The translation. Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936), a British convert to Islam, first published The Meaning of the Glorious Koran in 1930 (Johanna Pink, GloQur, 2023), to give “what Muslims the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Koran” (Foreword, p. vii). It is quoted from that printing, as quran-archive.org shows it. Verse numbers are the standard ones; the printing’s 6:102 is 6:101. Arabic words are from the Uthmani text; glosses in single quotation marks are this study’s.
• The frame. The Quran is a witness to how Jesus was spoken of six centuries on, tested against the texts as premises (R1), as A Course in Miracles is.

What it says of Jesus, beside the texts.

• Measured: his names. ʿĪsā stands in 25 verses, 16 as ʿĪsā ibn Maryam; al-masīḥ in 9, 11 times; Maryam in 31, 34 times; al-injīl in 12. rūḥun minhu, ‘a spirit from Him’ (4:171), is not his alone: at 58:22 God strengthens believers bi-rūḥin minhu.
• The word and the son. Stated (the Quran). Mary’s question is answered, “If He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is.” (3:47), and “the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam.” (3:59). Inference. The Quran’s Jesus is a word as one made by “Be!”, like Adam, at the annunciation and again by name: strong. The texts’ Word “was God” and made all things (John 1:1, 3): one title names a creature in the one and the maker of all in the other; they cannot both hold. Strong. 6:101 asks, “How can He have a child, when there is for Him no consort”; the texts give none, the child being “from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20): on that, no conflict.
• The cradle and the birds. Stated. The texts record no sign before Cana, “the first of His signs” (John 2:11), though he did “many other signs”, “which are not written in this book.” (John 20:30). Stated (outside the canon). In the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy the infant tells Mary from his cradle, “I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Logos, whom you have brought forth, as the Angel Gabriel announced to you;” (1). In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, “And having made some soft clay, He fashioned out of it twelve sparrows.” “And the sparrows flew, and went off crying.” (2; both tr. Alexander Walker, Ante-Nicene Fathers 8, 1886). Inference. Which came from which is not tested here. One cradle scene carries opposite confessions, “I am Jesus, the Son of God” and “Lo! I am the slave of Allah.” (19:30): follows. If the cradle speech is one of his signs, John 2:11 rules it out; if John counts those of his ministry, it does not: a reading. The birds of 3:49: no evidence in the texts, and not ruled out (John 20:30).
• His death and his raising. Measured. tawaffā, ‘to take in full’, the verb of 3:55 and of 5:117, falammā tawaffaytanī, ‘when You took me’, stands in 25 verses; in 21 of the other 23 it is the taking of the dying, at 6:60 of men in sleep, and 39:42 names both. shubbiha lahum (4:157), ‘it was made to seem so to them’, is passive and names no subject. Ma’ariful-Qur’an, of the reading that takes 5:117 for his death: “to reject his ascension to heavens and to establish his natural death is not a sound inference”. Inference. Whether he died before he was taken up, the verb does not decide; whether 4:157 means another made to look like him or the event made to seem so, the passive does not say: each, a reading. The texts have him die on the cross and rise before he is taken up, and “will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11): on his taking up they agree, and on his return as Ma’ariful-Qur’an reads it; on his death on the cross they cannot both hold. Follows.
• The messenger after him. Stated (Pickthall’s note). “Ar. Aḥmad. A name of the Prophet of Arabia.” “The promised ‘Comforter’ was believed by many Christian communities of the East to be a Prophet yet to come, and most of them accepted Muhammad as that Prophet.” Measured. aḥmad, on the root of muḥammad (3:144; 33:40; 47:2; 48:29), stands only at 61:6. In the SBLGNT παράκλητος stands in five verses (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7; 1 John 2:1), with no variant marked on the word; at 14:26 it is named τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ‘the Holy Spirit’, and at 1 John 2:1 the advocate is “Jesus Christ, the Righteous One”. Inference. The Advocate of John 14 is the Holy Spirit, a second beside Jesus (14:16; 1 John 2:1), who “abides with you and will be in you” (14:17). That he is a prophet to come contradicts 14:26, on the texts as premises (R1): ruled out. Pickthall’s note gives no source for the belief it reports: not shown.
• The prophet in the Torah. Measured. 7:157 speaks of the Prophet whom they find yajidūnahū maktūban ʿindahum fī l-tawrāti wa-l-injīl, ‘written with them in the Torah and the Gospel’. Of a prophet to come, the Torah speaks in Deuteronomy 18: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers.” (18:15); “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.” (18:18). Its ‘from among their brothers’, miqqereb ʾăḥêhem, is the phrase of the law of the king: “Appoint a king from among your brothers; you are not to set over yourselves a foreigner who is not one of your brothers.” (17:15); and 18:15 adds miqqirbĕkā, ‘from your midst’. Inference. In Deuteronomy, ‘from among your brothers’ is from Israel, set against the foreigner (17:15): that 18:15–18 promises a prophet of another people contradicts it, on the texts as premises (R1): ruled out. Peter reads the promise of Jesus (Acts 3:22, 26).
• Where it agrees. With the texts, the Quran has Jesus born of a virgin, the Messiah, healer of the blind and the leper and raiser of the dead, sent “unto the children of Israel” (3:49; Matthew 15:24), and taken up to God (4:158; Acts 1:9).
• Where it parts. It denies what the texts state of his person and his death: that the Word “was God” (John 1:1; 20:28), which it calls unbelief (5:72); that he is the Son (Luke 1:35), where God “begetteth not” (112:3); and that he was crucified and died (Mark 15:24; 1 Corinthians 15:3), against 4:157.

The Trinity it denies.

• Stated (the Quran). “They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no God save the One God.” (5:73); “say not ‘Three’ — Cease! (it is) better for you! — Allah is only One God.” (4:171). In 5:116 God asks Jesus, aʾanta qulta li-l-nāsi ttakhidhūnī wa-ummiya ilāhayni min dūni llāh, ‘did you say to people, Take me and my mother as two gods besides God?’, and Jesus denies it.
• Stated: the texts. “the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Mark 12:29); “there is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4); and one name, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
• Two readings of 5:116. Ibn Kathir: God speaks “in the presence of those who worshipped `Isa and his mother as gods besides Allah”; “This is a threat and a warning to Christians, chastising them in public”. Maududi: “The Christians were not content merely with deifying Jesus and the Holy Spirit.” “They even turned Mary, the mother of Jesus, into a full-fledged object of worship.” (note 130).
• Inference. The texts’ three are Father, Son and Holy Spirit; no text makes Mary divine. If 5:116 describes the faith the texts state, it misdescribes it: ruled out. If it rejects a worship of Mary, as Maududi reads it, the texts reject that too: worship is God’s alone (Matthew 4:10). No conflict. Which it means is a reading. 5:73 denies a God who is one of three, as the texts deny more than one God: no conflict. They part on the Son as God (John 1:1; 5:72): they cannot both hold. Follows.

The record.

• Measured by others. H. A. G. Houghton names “the two famous fourth-century Greek pandects Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus” (New Testament Studies 69, 2023; Skeptics’ questions, 19): whole Greek Bibles, Mark’s Gospel among their books.
• The argument Christians make. “Here Christians are told to consult the Gospel since it is guidance and light.” (Sam Shamoun, Answering Islam). At full strength: their Gospel is the four, which state the crucifixion (Mark 15:24) and stood in whole Bibles by the fourth century; so 5:47 sends its hearers to books that state what 4:157 denies.
• The Muslim reply: taḥrīf, ‘alteration’. Of the Children of Israel: “They change words from their context” (5:13); of those who call themselves Christians: “they forgot a part of that whereof they were admonished” (5:14); to the People of the Scripture, a messenger is “expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture” (5:15); and 2:79 pronounces woe on those who yaktubūna l-kitāba bi-aydīhim, ‘write the Book with their own hands’. A Muslim translator writes the reply into 5:47: the Injīl is the book revealed to Jesus, “of which the extant Gospel is a corruption” (Muhammad Mahmud Ghali). Another reading limits the verse to its time: “they should judge in accordance with the truth it contains prior to the coming of Muhammad” (the English Mukhtaṣar).
• Measured. ḥarrafa, ‘to change’, the verb of 5:13, stands in four verses (2:75; 4:46; 5:13; 5:41), each of Jews or of the Children of Israel (2:75 in the address to them that opens at 2:40).
• Inference. The argument’s premises on the four Gospels are stated, and measured by others; that the “Gospel” of 5:47 is the four, and binding in Muhammad’s day, it needs; Ghali denies the first, the Mukhtaṣar the second: a reading. The Quran’s verb of changing words is said of Jews, and of Christians it charges forgetting and hiding (5:14–15): that it charges the Gospel’s text with change is a reading, which 5:47 does not state. Alteration of Christian books does not reach Tacitus’s report of the execution (Confirmations). Follows.

Result.

• Inference: what the record can test. His death on the cross was reported from the first: by Paul (1 Corinthians 2:2; 15:3–4); by all four Gospels, under Pilate (John 19:16; the table); and, outside the church, by Tacitus, as an execution under Pilate (Confirmations). Follows.
• Inference: what it cannot test. “it appeared so unto them” (4:157) says that what was seen was not what was. A record of what was seen and reported cannot test that: not evidence either way (Skeptics’ questions, 24).
• Inference: against the texts. With the texts as premises (rule R1), its denials (Where it parts) contradict stated texts: it cannot stand beside them, nor close a gap in the sequence, whose end, the nations given to the Son (steps 14–17), it denies. Where it agrees, it is a later witness on their side, not a premise. Follows.
• What is not tested. Its claim to be revelation, and Muhammad’s prophethood; the hadith; the Quran’s own text and readings; Muslim interpretation beyond the interpreters quoted (Mysteries and open questions, the limits of the method).

In one sentence. The Quran honors Jesus as the virgin-born Messiah who worked signs and was taken up to God, and there it agrees with the texts; it denies that he is God and God’s Son and that he died on the cross, and there it contradicts them; his death was reported from the first, and its “it appeared so unto them” is beyond any record’s test.

Tablets and inscriptions from before the biblical books, or from before most of them took their final form, cannot be premises here (rule R1). They are witnesses to what was said and pictured in the world the texts addressed. Five bear on the sequence; the seventy sons of Athirat at Ugarit are weighed under Gap 2, and the tablets against demons under Demons and possession.

Their age. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (University of Oxford) “comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia” and which “date to the late third and early second millennia BCE”. The Ugaritic text below is dated “1350 - 1185 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)” (Texts in Conversation, citing Paul K. K. Cho, Cambridge University Press, 2018). The Deir Alla text was found in “a destruction level dating to around 800 B.C.E.” (Carl S. Ehrlich, TheTorah.com, 2018).

1. Ugarit: the dragon of Isaiah 27:1.

• The tablet. “When thou hast smitten Lotan, the fleeing serpent (and) hast put to an end the tortuous serpent”, “the mighty one with seven heads” (Ras Shamra 67:1:1, in Charles F. Pfeiffer’s translation, The Evangelical Quarterly 32.4, 1960). Another translation of the same lines, cited as KTU 1.5 I:1: “Though you struck Litan the wriggling serpent, finished off the writhing serpent, Encircler-with-seven-heads,” (as given by Texts in Conversation, citing Cho 2018).
• The texts. “Leviathan the fleeing serpent —Leviathan the coiling serpent” (Isaiah 27:1); “You crushed the heads of Leviathan” (Psalm 74:14); “a huge red dragon with seven heads” (Revelation 12:3), whom Revelation names “that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan” (12:9).
• A witness’s comparison. Pfeiffer: “One of the tablets from Canaanite Ras Shamra (67: 1: 1) describes Lotan in almost identical words”.
• Inference. Isaiah 27:1 takes up an older Canaanite picture, a serpent of the sea that a god kills, with its two epithets in the same order: strong. That Revelation’s seven heads come from the same picture is a reading; Psalm 74:14 already gives Leviathan heads. The picture is older than the texts, but its meaning in the canon is set by the texts: Isaiah gives the victory to the LORD, and Revelation names the dragon the devil (Hell under the four attributes).

2. The flood (steps 5–6).

• The tablet. In the Sumerian flood story: “A decision that the seed of mankind is to be destroyed has been made.” “The verdict, the word of the divine assembly, cannot be revoked.” “In those days Zi-ud-sura the king” builds a boat, and “waves and windstorms had rocked the huge boat for seven days and seven nights”. Afterward “they granted him life like a god, they brought down to him eternal life.” (ETCSL, The flood story).
• The tablets, in Babylonian. In tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh the flood’s survivor tells how “Mount Nimuš held the boat fast”; then “I brought out a dove, setting it free.”, and “No perch was available for it, so it came back to [me].”; then a swallow, and last a raven: “Off went the raven and it saw the waters receding.” Then “I brought out an offering and sacrificed to the four corners of the earth,” and “The gods smelled the savour, the gods smelled the sweet savour, the gods gathered like flies round the sacrificer” (lines 145–163, tr. A. R. George, 2003, as given by SOAS University of London). The British Museum’s copy, the Flood Tablet from the library of Ashurbanipal, is of the seventh century BC, and the museum notes “its similarity to the Flood story in the Book of Genesis”. The tradition was known in the Levant before that: at Ugarit, a Middle Babylonian copy of Atrahasis has its hero say, “I am Atra-ḫasīs the priest. I live in the temple of Ea, my lord.” (RS 22.421, SEAL), and “A Late Bronze Age fragment of a clay cuneiform tablet with the Gilgamesh Epic … was found in the 1950s on the surface at Megiddo.” (Y. Goren and others, Archaeometry 51, 2009).
• The texts. The LORD says, “I will blot out man, whom I have created” (Genesis 6:7), because “the earth is full of violence” (6:13); “the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights” (7:12); “the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (8:4); Noah “sent out a raven” (8:7), then a dove, which “found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him in the ark” (8:9); he “offered burnt offerings on the altar” (8:20), and “the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma” (8:21); and “So Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.” (9:29).
• Inference. A flood decreed from above, with one man saved in a boat, was told before Genesis was written: that follows from the dates above. Genesis 8 and the Babylonian tablet share, in one sequence, the boat held on a mountain, birds sent out to find dry land, a dove that comes back for want of a place to rest, and an offering whose aroma is smelled from heaven, by the LORD or by the gods; the birds differ in order, the raven first in Genesis and last on the tablet. So many shared details in one sequence make them two tellings of one story, not two stories: strong. Which drew on which, or both on an older telling, neither text says: a reading. Genesis tells it of one God who judges violence; in the Sumerian story the verdict is “the word of the divine assembly”, and its hero is given “life like a god”. In Genesis Noah dies (9:29), and the one father taken from death is Enoch, before the flood, who “walked with God” (5:24). A witness to the story’s age, and to a council that decrees; no premise, and no step rests on the question of borrowing.

3. One speech for all (step 7).

• The tablet. In Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, a spell looks to a day “when there is no snake, when there is no scorpion, when there is no hyena, when there is no lion,” when “the whole universe, the well-guarded people -- may they all address Enlil together in a single language!”; and Enki “shall change the speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.” (ETCSL, Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta, lines 134–155).
• The texts. “Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech.” (Genesis 11:1); “Come, let Us go down and confuse their language” (11:7).
• Inference. In this translation the spell looks forward to one speech, the reverse of Babel; it shares with Genesis 11:1 only the picture of one language for all. Weak, as a link to Babel.

4. The kings before the flood (Before Adam, D).

• The tablet. “After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug.” “Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years.” “In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241200 years.” “Then the flood swept over.” (ETCSL, The Sumerian king list).
• The texts. “So Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.” (Genesis 5:27); the Hebrew count from Adam to the flood is 1,656 years (Before Adam, D).
• Inference. Both remember a long age before a flood, with long lives or reigns. The list gives reigns of kings, 241,200 years for eight; Genesis gives the lives of ten fathers, nine of them ending in death, while the seventh, Enoch, “was no more, because God had taken him away” (5:24). That both remember such an age follows from the texts quoted. A witness to the memory; it does not decide how Genesis 5’s numbers are to be read.

5. Deir Alla: Balaam and the gods (steps 2 and 11).

• The inscription. Plaster fragments found “at the site of Tell Deir ‘Alla in the eastern Jordan Valley”, in Carl S. Ehrlich’s translation (TheTorah.com, 2018): “The misfortunes of the book of Balaam s[on of Beo]r.” “A divine seer was he.” “The gods came to him at night”, and he tells “what the Shadday-gods have planned,”; Ehrlich describes “a council (מועד) of gods who oppose El”.
• The texts. Balak “sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor” (Numbers 22:5); “That night God came to Balaam” (22:20); the oracles are given in “the plains of Moab near the Jordan” (22:1).
• Inference. An inscription from the Jordan Valley, about a seer of the same name, has gods who come by night and a council of gods. It shows the picture of a heavenly council outside the Bible, near Israel, about 800 BC: follows, from the inscription and its date. A witness, not a premise.

Result. These texts show that a divine assembly, a decreed flood with a boat, one speech for all, a long age before the flood, and a serpent of the sea killed by a god were pictured before the biblical books were written, or before most of them took their final form. They cannot be premises (rule R1), and they settle no gap: they speak of many gods, where the texts speak of one God and the beings he made (step 1); and Israel’s own inscriptions joined the LORD’s name to an asherah, a practice the texts report and condemn (Confirmations, Kuntillet ʿAjrud). What they add is age and setting. The texts’ council, flood, Babel and dragon speak a language their first hearers already knew, and set it under one God. Follows, for the council and the flood’s age; strong, for the dragon, and for the flood as one story with Babylon’s; weak, for Babel.

Inscriptions, tablets, scrolls and ancient histories from the texts’ own world name many of the people and events the texts name. They are witnesses, not premises (rule R1). They can confirm what the texts set in history: kings, wars, tribute, exile, return and officials. They cannot confirm what the texts say of God, his council or the sons of God, which no inscription could witness; they can show what Israelites said of their God, as at Kuntillet ʿAjrud (below). Each find below is quoted from a museum record, a scholarly edition, a journal, a reference work or a named author; where a find and the texts differ, the difference is given, and the best-known differences are among the finds.

Egypt and Moses.

The wilderness and the conquest, in the ground.

Israel in Canaan, and the two kingdoms.

Judah, from Hezekiah to the exile.

Babylon’s fall and the return.

The scrolls.

The New Testament.

The resurrection, as history.

• Stated: the earliest list of the appearances. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth.” (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). Paul knew two of those named: “Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas, and I stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.” (Galatians 1:18–19). Paul stakes the faith on it: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
• Measured. 1 Corinthians 15:3 opens with Παρέδωκα … ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον, ‘I passed on … what I also received’, the pair of words with which Paul hands on the Lord’s Supper in 11:23 (παρέλαβον … παρέδωκα).
• Stated: the first witnesses, and the first counter-story. In all four Gospels the first at the empty tomb are women (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–10; John 20:1), and “their words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women” (Luke 24:11). Matthew records the first explanation offered against it: “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’” (Matthew 28:13), “And this account has been circulated among the Jews to this very day.” (28:15).
• Stated (Josephus). In his account of the Law, “let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Antiquities 4.219, tr. Whiston).
• The historians. Two who read the same evidence differently. Bart Ehrman: “I think some (a few) of the disciples had visions of Jesus.” “That is, they saw him, or thought they saw him — which for them would have been the same thing.” (his blog, 4 April 2021). N. T. Wright, as his publisher describes his book, reads the Easter narratives “as accounts of two actual events”, the empty tomb and the appearances: “No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation.” (Fortress Press, on The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003). Tacitus and Josephus, above, report the execution under Pilate.
• Inference. That Jesus was executed under Pilate is reported outside the texts by Tacitus and, in the core most scholars accept, by Josephus: strong (above). That his followers soon reported that he had appeared to them is stated in the earliest list of the appearances (1 Corinthians 15:3–8), by one who had conferred with Cephas and seen James within a few years (Galatians 1:18–19), and historians on both sides agree that they so reported: strong. That Paul received the list from others is a reading of the pair of verbs, which mark a tradition handed on; in 11:23 he names the Lord as its source, and Galatians 1:12 says his gospel came “by revelation from Jesus Christ”. That women were the first witnesses, in a culture whose law, as Josephus gives it, did not admit their testimony, is stated in all four Gospels; that the church would not have invented such witnesses is a reading. Whether there was a known tomb found empty, and what the disciples saw, is where the historians divide, between visions (Ehrman) and a bodily resurrection (Wright): as history, not shown either way. Weighed by Hume’s rule, as Ehrman weighs it, the verdict on what they saw turns on the probability given to the event before the witnesses are heard, and that on whether God acts, which no measurement settles (Physics, 6). That he rose is stated in the texts; like the other acts of God they tell, it is beyond what an inscription can witness (Beyond any inscription, below).

The count of the years.

• Measured by others. The count of years goes back to Dionysius Exiguus, “the sixth-century putative inventor of Anno Domini dating”, and to the Easter table “which Dionysius completed in AD 525” (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.05.57, on Alden A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era, 2008). Bede “established the practice of dating events from the birth of Jesus Christ by using the designation ad, or anno Domini (in the year of the Lord).” His Ecclesiastical History of the English People is the work “which he finished in 731” (Britannica, students’ edition, “Bede the Venerable”). The Gregorian calendar is “the solar dating system now in general use” (Encyclopaedia Britannica), and the international standard for writing dates, ISO 8601, “requires that the Gregorian calendar be used for all dates.” (Claus Tøndering, on ISO 8601). The year this document is dated, 2026, is a year of that count, and the neutral label keeps its reference point: BCE is “used to refer to the years that came before the birth of Jesus Christ” (Britannica Dictionary).
• Stated. “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod” (Matthew 2:1); “After Herod died” (2:19); “In the time of Herod king of Judea” (Luke 1:5).
• Measured by others. Herod “died March/April, 4 bce” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Herod”). Of the count’s first year, the review judges that Dionysius’s “dating of the nativity was quite likely wrong”, and notes that Bede had already observed that it “contradicted biblical, annalistic, and patristic evidence”.
• Inference. By the texts’ own marker Jesus was born while Herod lived (Matthew 2:1, 19), so the count begins a few years after the birth it counts from. The count is a witness to his place in history: five centuries on, the church numbered time from his birth, and the world that took up its calendar writes its years from it, even under the neutral label. Strong, as a witness to the weight his life carried with those who came after. It is not evidence of the events the texts tell: it was set long after them, from the church’s belief, and it spread with the church and then with the calendar of the West. For the events: not evidence; they rest on the records above (Tacitus, Josephus, Paul).

What they confirm, and what they cannot.

• Confirmed. Ten kings of Israel and Judah, by name, in their dealings with Moab, Assyria and Babylon: Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh and Jehoiachin. The kings around them whom the texts name: Mesha, Rezin, Tiglath-pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Tirhakah, Nebuchadnezzar, Hophra, Belshazzar and Cyrus, and, strongly, Shishak and Neco. The fall of Samaria and of Jerusalem, and the exile, with the year of 597 BC alike on both counts of a king’s years; and, for the return, Cyrus’s policy of sending peoples and their gods home. Israelites who joined the LORD’s name to an asherah, as the texts report and condemn. In the New Testament: Quirinius and a census of Judea, Pilate, Gallio, Christ’s execution under Pilate, James the brother of Jesus, and a Theudas. Beyond Israel, Greek and Roman writers told of Moses leading a people out of Egypt, and a story Josephus took from the Egyptian Manetho named its leader Moses by report. In Egypt’s own records: Asiatic servants under Semitic names, one of them Shiphrah; a Shasu land named yhw; Pi-Ramesse, the residence of Ramesses II, built in part on the site of Avaris; and herders of Edom let past a frontier fortress with their flocks.
• Differs. Between the texts and the records: who killed Joram and Ahaziah (Tel Dan; 2 Kings 9); Sennacherib’s silver, 800 talents to 300; who took Samaria (2 Kings 17:3–6, against Sargon; a reading); Pekah’s twenty years, and the eight years from Samaria’s fall to Sennacherib (2 Kings 15:27; 18:10, 13, against the Assyrian dates; a reading); when Moab broke free (the Mesha Stele, against 2 Kings 3:5; a reading); Belshazzar’s father (Daniel 5:2, open); Darius the Mede, whom no record names (Daniel 6:28; 9:1; a reading); who Moses was, and why his people left Egypt (Manetho, Strabo and Tacitus, each against the texts and against each other); the date of the exodus (1 Kings 6:1, against a city of Ramesses II; a reading); the wilderness years, of which the surveys find no trace in Sinai; Jericho and Ai, no cities to take on the excavators’ dates (a reading, for Ai); the highland villages, the land’s own people on Finkelstein’s reading (a reading); how the texts came to call Tirhakah king in 701 BC (2 Kings 19:9; a reading); who brought Hophra down (Jeremiah 44:30, against Herodotus; a reading), with no record that Babylon took Egypt (Jeremiah 43:11; Ezekiel 29:19; no evidence); the census under Quirinius, after Herod in Josephus and in Herod’s time in Luke (Luke 2:2); and the time of Theudas (Acts 5:36, against Josephus; a reading). Tacitus’s title for Pilate differs from the stone’s. Within the texts, Daniel 1:1 counts Jehoiakim’s years one short of Jeremiah (a reading), and the numbers taken in 597 BC differ (2 Kings 24:14, 16; Jeremiah 52:28; open).
• Beyond any inscription. What the texts say of God: the angel of 2 Kings 19:35, the LORD who stirred Cyrus (Ezra 1:1), the council and the sons of God. No inscription could witness these, and none does. Nor do the records reach the patriarchs, the exodus or the conquest: Egypt’s records quoted here show features the texts give, but none names Israel’s patriarchs, Moses or the exodus, and the earliest record that names Israel dates to about 1209 BC; where the ground has been searched, it shows no camp of the wilderness years in Sinai, and no city at Jericho or Ai at the dates given for the conquest (above). No record of Egypt quoted here tells of the plagues, of the sea, or of Pharaoh’s army lost in it, and none of its own records names Moses; the one Egyptian writer quoted on him, Manetho, is known only through Josephus, and names him there by report, a story Josephus traces to rumor, not to Egypt’s records.

Result. The tables set out 43 finds, the best-known differences among them; the count is of the finds quoted here, not of every claim in the texts that a record could check. Of the 43, 38 confirm something the texts set in history, a name, title, place, event or practice; 18 differ from the texts at a named point, 2 more show the texts differing among themselves, and 1 leaves a point open, Belshazzar’s father (Daniel 5:2); and 5 confirm nothing: the ground in Sinai, at Jericho and Ai and in the highlands, and Darius the Mede. From the ninth century BC to the exile, with Shishak’s campaign before it, and in the first century AD, the texts’ history stands beside its neighbors’ records again and again, in names, titles, order and places, and in some numbers where others differ, and the differences found are named. Its writers knew the world they wrote of: their history of the kings and of the first century was written from knowledge of real kings and real events. Strong. Before the kings the records do not reach the events. Egypt’s own records show features the texts give, Semitic servants of the eighteenth century BC, a city of Ramesses II, herders from Edom let in late in the thirteenth, and a Pithom named only at a town of the seventh century on one identification: they fix no date for Israel’s time in Egypt and show none of its events. The writers who name Moses tell stories of their own, at odds with the texts and with each other, and the ground, where searched, shows no trace of the wilderness years and no city to take at Jericho or Ai on the excavators’ dates. For these the texts’ history is not shown by the records, and where the ground speaks it differs, on a reading. None of this is proof of what the texts say of God, and the sequence does not rest on it: its premises are the texts themselves (rule R1).

No step rests on when Adam lived, how long the days of Genesis 1 were, or what the Nephilim were. This section sets out each clash those questions raise, inside the Bible and between the Bible and measurement, with the ways readers reconcile it; a register at the end grades them.

What came before Adam in the texts. Beings, not people. At the founding of the earth “all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7; step 2), and God speaks in the plural before he makes man: “Let Us make man” (Genesis 1:26; step 3). The devil “has been sinning from the very start” (1 John 3:8); the text does not say whether that start came before Adam.

What the ground shows (measured by others).

• The United States Geological Survey: “These calculations result in an age for the Earth and meteorites, and hence the Solar System, of 4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent.” (Age of the Earth).
• The Jebel Irhoud fossils from Morocco were reported in 2017 as the oldest Homo sapiens; dating of heated flints showed “that the site is about 300 thousand years old” (Max Planck Institute; Hublin et al. and Richter et al., Nature, 2017).
• A cave scene on Sulawesi was “Painted at least 51,200 years ago” and is “the earliest known surviving example of representational art, and visual storytelling, in the world” (Oktaviana et al., Nature, 2024).
• Reading the Hebrew genealogies as a timeline, James Ussher put the beginning of time at “the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of Octob.”, his margin reading “Year before Christ 4004” (The Annals of the World, 1658, p. 1).

The clashes, and how they reconcile.

A. Cain’s wife and city, and Adam as the first man.

• Stated. Cain fears “whoever finds me will kill me” (Genesis 4:14), then takes a wife and builds a city (4:17). Yet “The first man Adam became a living being” (1 Corinthians 15:45), and “From one man He made every nation of men” (Acts 17:26). Luke ends his line τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ θεοῦ, ‘of Adam, of God’ (Luke 3:38).
• Reconciled in the texts. Adam “had other sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4), and Jubilees names Cain’s wife: “And Cain took Âwân his sister to be his wife” (Jubilees 4:9).
• The other reading. Isaac La Peyrère, in the English of 1655, reads Romans 5:13 of a law given to Adam: then sin was in the world “before the Law of Adam, or before Adam, which is the ſame” (A Theological Systeme upon that Presupposition, that Men were before Adam, I.1). Paul’s own time without the law runs “from Adam until Moses” (Romans 5:14): after Adam, not before.

B. The day of eating, and 930 years.

• Stated. The warning is “in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17), yet “Adam lived a total of 930 years” (5:5).
• Measured. The same Hebrew, bĕyôm with môt tāmût, ‘in the day … you will surely die’, is Solomon’s word to Shimei: “On the day you go out and cross the Kidron Valley, know for sure that you will die” (1 Kings 2:37; 2:42). Shimei went, and was put to death afterward, when, at the king’s command, Benaiah “struck Shimei down, and he died” (2:46). In that idiom the sentence falls on the day; the death follows. With the ancient reading below, either removes the clash: two independent readings, either enough. Strong.
• Reconciled by the oldest readers. A day of the Lord is a thousand years: “And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens” (Jubilees 4:30); “we know that he did not complete a thousand years” (Justin, Dialogue 81). A reading, and an ancient one.
• Stated: the spans of life. After the Flood the spans fall, from “So Noah lived a total of 950 years” (9:29) to “Abraham lived a total of 175 years” (25:7) and “So Joseph died at the age of 110” (50:26). Jacob says his years “have not matched the years of the travels of my fathers” (47:9), and the psalm gives the span its readers knew: “The length of our days is seventy years— or eighty if we are strong” (Psalm 90:10). Genesis 6:3, “his days shall be 120 years”, is read as a span of life or as the years left before the Flood: a reading.
• Measured by others. Guinness World Records: “The oldest person to ever live and the oldest person ever (female) was Jeanne Louise Calment”, born at Arles in 1875, “who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days old.” (2020).
• Inference. Read as ages, the lives of nine hundred years and more stand more than seven times beyond the longest life on record, and no measured life comes near them: not supported. They far exceed the span the psalm gives its readers too, and Genesis 6:3, read as a span of life, is outrun by the ages after the Flood, Shem’s 600 among them (11:10–11). Read with D’s figures, which follow a scheme (strong, D), and beside the long reigns before the flood in the Sumerian King List (Older tablets), they belong to a convention of the genre: a reading.

C. The order of Genesis 1 and 2.

• Stated. Genesis 1 makes the animals (1:24–25) before man (1:26–27). In Genesis 2 the LORD makes the man first, and then “formed every beast of the field” and brings them to him (2:19, BSB).
• Measured. The verb, wayyīṣer, is the form Hebrew narrative uses for the next event. The ESV reads it as a look back, “had formed every beast of the field”. Which is meant is a reading.
• Stated: the plants. In Genesis 1 the earth brings forth plants on day 3 (1:11–13). The second account opens when “no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, nor had any plant of the field sprouted”, and gives two reasons: “for the LORD God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground” (2:5).
• A reading. Read by its two reasons, rain and a man to work the ground, 2:5 speaks of the plants of the field, not of all plants, and does not clash with day 3.

D. Two counts of years.

• Measured. Adding each father’s age at his son’s birth (Genesis 5 and 11), with Noah’s 600 years at the Flood (7:6) and Arphaxad born “Two years after the flood” (11:10), the Hebrew gives 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood and 1,948 to Abram’s birth. Brenton’s Greek gives 2,242 and 3,414; Rahlfs’s Greek gives the same to the Flood and 3,314 to Abram, because it has Nahor beget Terah at 79 (11:24) where Brenton has 179.
• Measured. The Greek has a generation the Hebrew lacks, Cainan (Genesis 11:12–13), and Luke keeps him: “the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad” (Luke 3:36). Totals differ too: “So Lamech lived a total of 777 years” (Genesis 5:31), where the Greek has “seven hundred and fifty-three years”.
• Measured: the pattern of the ages. Of the 19 ages at a son’s birth that the Hebrew and the Greek both give, 12 differ by exactly 100 years, the Greek higher: Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel and Enoch in Genesis 5, and Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu and Serug in Genesis 11, in Brenton’s Greek and Rahlfs’s alike. In Genesis 5 the Greek’s remaining years are 100 fewer for the same six, so that eight of the nine lifespans agree: Adam lives 930 years in both, 130 and 800 in the Hebrew, 230 and 700 in the Greek. On the Greek figures Methuselah is born in the year 1287 from creation and dies at 969 in 2256, fourteen years after the Flood of 2242, though “only Noah and those with him in the ark remained” (7:23); in the Hebrew he dies in 1656, the year of the Flood. And all 20 Hebrew figures from Adam to Noah, the ten ages at a son’s birth, the nine remaining spans of Genesis 5 and Noah’s 350 years after the Flood (9:28), end in 0, 2, 5 or 7. If each figure’s remainder on division by 5 were as likely as any other, twenty figures would leave only 0 or 2 about once in 91 million tries, and only some two remainders, whichever two, about once in 9 million.
• Stated: Terah’s age. “When Terah was 70 years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” (Genesis 11:26); “Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.” (11:32); “Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.” (12:4); and Stephen: “After his father died, God brought him out of that place” (Acts 7:4). If Abram left after Terah died, Terah was at least 130 at Abram’s birth, and 70 is his age at the first of the three sons; every count to Abram then grows by at least 60 years. Ussher already reads it so: “In the year 2008 of the world, was Abram born; for he was 75 years old, when Tharah his father died at the age of 205 years,” (The Annals of the World, 1658, the English of his Latin Annales): 1,948 and 60.
• Ways to reconcile. The lists differ by a whole generation, Cainan; their shared ages differ by a hundred years in twelve places and are made good in six, which no slip of a copyist does; and they leave Terah’s age open. No reading makes them exact. Some numbers look like symbols, such as “So Enoch lived a total of 365 years” (Genesis 5:23), the days of a year.
• Inference. That one tradition recalculated the other’s ages is strong: twelve differences of exactly a hundred, and six spans made good to keep the lifespans, with no rival of comparable support. Which tradition is the older, the texts do not say: a reading. At Methuselah the Hebrew count fits the Flood narrative and the Greek count contradicts it (7:23): follows, from the figures. That the Hebrew figures were built to a scheme is strong, on the remainders and on Enoch’s 365; what the scheme meant is a reading.

E. The length of the days.

• Stated: “day” is not always one day. Genesis 2:4 uses it for the whole making of heaven and earth: “in the day that the LORD God made them” (bĕyôm, the yôm of the six days). Psalm 90:4 says “a thousand years are but a day that passes”, and 2 Peter 3:8 “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years”. Prophecy trades days for years: “a year for each day” (Numbers 14:34); “a day for each year” (Ezekiel 4:6).
• Stated: seventy and seven. “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24); “not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!” (Matthew 18:22). Daniel reads in Jeremiah of “seventy years” (Daniel 9:2) and is answered, “Seventy weeks” (9:24): šābuʿîm šibʿîm, ‘seventy sevens’. Gideon’s and Ahab’s seventy sons are in Gap 2.
• A reading. In the two sayings the numbers stand for ‘without limit’, not a count. Daniel’s sevens are read as sevens of years, 490 in all, though the text does not say years.
• Stated: the case for ordinary days. Each day closes like the first, “And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day” (Genesis 1:5), counted yôm ʾeḥād, ‘day one’, and “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth” (Exodus 20:11) ties the Sabbath week to creation. Basil reads the evening and morning as one day of “twenty-four hours” (Hexaemeron 2.8).
• Stated: early readers who did not read a clock. Barnabas reads the six days as six thousand years of history: “the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years” (Epistle of Barnabas 15). Origen asks who would think “that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars” (On First Principles 4.1.16). Augustine: “What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” (City of God 11.6).
• Measured. Even at a thousand years each, the six days make 6,000 years, not 4.54 billion.
• Inference. Of the readings of the word, only an open-ended day, an age of any length, reaches the measured age. The other ways through are to read Genesis 1 as no clock at all, as Origen and Augustine already doubted that its days were days like ours, or to keep the days and set the earth’s age before them, in a gap between 1:1 and 1:2, which reaches the age of the earth but not of life and man (Science and the Bible). Strong.

F. Adam and the oldest humans: date, number and descent.

• The clash. Both biblical counts put Adam a few thousand years before Abram (D); the oldest fossils reported as Homo sapiens are about 300,000 years old, and the oldest known representational art at least 51,200 (above).
• Measured by others: number and descent. The genome measures more than dates. Of a first couple as the source of every human genome, the geneticist Dennis Venema told NPR that it would be “against all the genomic evidence” of twenty years (2011). S. Joshua Swamidass, whose genealogical Adam is weighed below, sets the limit: “The genetic evidence only rules out a single-couple bottleneck (2, not 10,000) going back about 500,000 years” (2022); in the simulations Richard Buggs reports, “A bottleneck had to be at least 500,000 years ago before anything approaching a good fit was simulated.” (2018). The lines that pass from one parent alone meet sooner: “Y-adam is estimated to have lived, roughly, around 150,000 years ago.” “Mt-eve is estimated to have lived roughly the same time, though they did not likely live at the exact same time and place.” (Swamidass). The Neandertal DNA in living people (I) comes from a line that parted from ours long before: the oldest Neandertal nuclear DNA is “consistent with a rather early divergence of 550,000 to 750,000 years ago of the modern human lineage from archaic humans” (Svante Pääbo, Max Planck Society, 2016, of Matthias Meyer and colleagues, Nature). And of the body, “modern humans emerged from other primates as a large population” (Venema, as NPR quotes him), and human chromosome 2 carries a locus that “is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2” (IJdo and colleagues, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 88, 1991).
• Ways to reconcile. Gaps in the genealogies: Cainan shows the lists can differ by a generation, but reaching 300,000 years would take thousands of missing generations, where the texts show one. An old Adam: the publisher’s description of William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam (2021) says “Adam lived between 750,000 and 1,000,000 years ago” and that Genesis 1–11 “can most plausibly be classified as mytho-history”; this keeps Adam the first man and gives up the genealogies as a clock. A genealogical Adam: of S. Joshua Swamidass’s The Genealogical Adam and Eve (2019) its publisher writes, “Swamidass explains how it's possible for Adam and Eve to be rightly identified as the ancestors of everyone.”; this reads “From one man” as genealogy among people already living. Pius XII set a limit for Catholic readers: “For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.” (Humani Generis 37, 1950). Or Genesis 1–11 is not a timeline at all: then the dates were never the point.
• Inference. The genome sorts the ways. A first couple as the source of every human genome conflicts with the measured variety at either count’s date and at 300,000 years, and a sole first parent younger than the archaic split conflicts with the Neandertal DNA in living people: strong. Craig’s couple, older than 750,000 years, lies beyond what the measurements quoted exclude, and before that split: open. A genealogical Adam needs no bottleneck: “Universal ancestry does not require a genetic bottleneck and is entirely consistent with large population sizes.” (Swamidass). A reading; but only beside a flood that left other lines of mankind, for with eight survivors of all mankind the bottleneck returns at Noah (Physics, 6, The Flood). The body’s descent, which chromosome 2 records, sits with evolutionary creation and with a genealogical Adam whose line joined others. A de novo Adam as the sole first parent of all conflicts with it, unless he was made with the marks of a descent he never had, the weaker side (Physics, 1): strong. Y-chromosome Adam and mitochondrial Eve are no evidence for or against a first couple: a line that passes from one parent alone always meets in one ancestor, who need not have lived alone, and these two “did not likely live at the exact same time and place”. Follows. On the Flood as the texts tell it, every man’s line would meet in Noah, a few thousand years ago (Physics, 6).

G. The Nephilim after the Flood.

• Stated. After the Flood “only Noah and those with him in the ark remained” (Genesis 7:23), yet the spies report “the descendants of Anak that come from the Nephilim” (Numbers 13:33).
• Ways to reconcile. Genesis 6:4 has the Nephilim on the earth “in those days—and afterward as well”, read as after the Flood too. Or the claim is the spies’ own: it comes in what Numbers calls “a bad report” (13:32), and the Greek lacks the Anakite clause. No text says how Nephilim outlived the Flood (step 6). A reading.

H. Angels who do not marry.

• Stated. In the resurrection people “will neither marry nor be given in marriage” but “will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30), and “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). Yet the sons of God “took as wives whomever they chose” (Genesis 6:2), and 1 Enoch makes their children “great giants, whose height was three thousand ells” (1 Enoch 7).
• Ways to reconcile. Matthew speaks of angels in heaven, and Jude’s angels “abandoned their proper dwelling” (Jude 6). Or the sons of God were men of Seth’s line (step 5). How spirits could father children, no text explains; since “a spirit does not have flesh and bones”, a spirit father would need a body taken on, or a miracle (I). Open. The giants’ spirits as one account of where demons come from are weighed under Demons and possession.

I. Hybrids in the genome (measured by others). Crosses between kinds of humans are well established. A girl from Denisova Cave “had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father” (Slon et al., Nature, 2018). “The data suggest that between 1 and 4% of the genomes of people in Eurasia are derived from Neandertals.” (Green et al., Science, 2010); a high-coverage Neandertal genome later put the share at 1.8 to 2.6 percent in non-African populations outside Oceania (Prüfer et al., Science, 2017). Of the Denisovans: “the data suggest that it contributed 4–6% of its genetic material to the genomes of present-day Melanesians” (Reich et al., Nature, 2010). The last Neandertal gene flow into Europeans “likely occurred 37,000–86,000 years before the present (BP), and most likely 47,000–65,000 years ago” (Sankararaman et al., PLoS Genetics, 2012). Newer genomes narrow it: “the vast majority of Neandertal ancestry can be traced to a single, shared, extended period of gene flow into the common ancestors of all non-African individuals today”, one “which occurred about 47,000 years ago and lasted about 7,000 years” (Iasi and colleagues, Science); and in people who lived at Ranis in Germany and Zlatý kůň in Czechia about 45,000 years ago, “the Neandertal ancestry in this population was consistent with that found in all non-African populations today” (Sümer and colleagues, Nature; both as the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reported them, 12 December 2024). These crosses are all within the human family, and nothing in those studies points to a parent from outside it. A father leaves a genome: in mammals “a diploid genome derived from only one of the two parental sexes is incapable of supporting complete embryogenesis” (McGrath and Solter, Cell 37, 1984). On the angel reading of Genesis 6, then, the Nephilim had a father’s genome, a human one if the father took a human body, or one given by miracle. A line that carried a genome from outside the human family, and survived, would show in living genomes as the Neandertal line does; none shows, and the texts end the Nephilim at the Flood or, on the spies’ report, leave Anakites “only in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod” (Joshua 11:22; G). So the absence decides nothing against Genesis 6, and the genomes cannot be cited for the Nephilim. Their dates belong to F: on each estimate the Neandertal gene flow is older than Ussher’s 4004 BC by more than 30,000 years. With Genesis 6: no conflict, and no link.

J. The Urantia Book. “The Urantia Book was first published in 1955 by Urantia Foundation.” It dates Adam: “Adam and Eve arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago.” (74:0.1). It reads Genesis 6:4 as its Nodites, descended from “two groups, embracing 104 individuals who carried the modified Andonite germ plasm”: “The Nephilim (Nodites) were on earth in those days” (77:2). Its Adam lies about 32,000 years before Ussher’s date, far beyond the 1,466 years between the Hebrew count and Brenton’s; it cites no source a reader can check, and its Nodites are not the measured hybrids. A twentieth-century text: it can be quoted for what it says, not counted as evidence.

Science and the Bible.

• Where they clash. Read as a literal timeline, Genesis 1–11 conflicts with the measured ages above (E and F). Read as literal history of human descent, it conflicts with the measured genome where it makes one couple the source of every human genome a few thousand years ago (F), or leaves eight survivors of a flood (Physics, 6). Strong.
• Where they do not. The steps’ claims about God, the council, the nations and the Son are not things a laboratory can test: angels are “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1:14). The texts point to nature, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and praise searching: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out” (Proverbs 25:2).
• Older voices. Augustine: “it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.19, tr. Taylor). In 1931 Georges Lemaître wrote, “I would rather be inclined to think that the present state of quantum theory suggests a beginning of the world very different from the present order of Nature.” (Nature 127, 706).
• Ways readers fit them, in this document’s own summary. Young-earth: keep the literal timeline and reject the measured ages, or take them as the marks of a world made mature (Physics, 1). Gap: in Lee Irons’s account the theory inserts “a gap of unknown time between the first two verses of Genesis 1”; it “makes its modern appearance in the work of Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers, who proposed it in 1814”, and through the Scofield Reference Bible “became entrenched as orthodoxy in fundamentalist circles” (Christian Research Journal 37, 2014). Its six days remake a ruined world, so it reaches the age of the earth but dates life and man to the remaking, in Adam’s week (D), where Greenland’s counted layers run unbroken through that span (Physics, 1) and people are older (F). Day-age: each day an age of any length; this fits the ages, but the order needs readings of its own, with light on day 1 (1:3) and plants on day 3 (1:11) before “two great lights” on day 4 (1:16). The living things keep an order the fossils do not. Day 5 brings “every bird of flight” (1:21), before the “livestock, land crawlers, and beasts of the earth” of day 6 (1:24); the rocks keep “fossil footprints from early backboned land animals” from “some 395 million years ago” (Uppsala University, 2010, of a study in Nature), and Archaeopteryx, “possibly the earliest, bird fossil”, is about 150 million years old, from the Late Jurassic (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2014). The “trees bearing fruit with seed” of day 3 (1:12) come before both; if their fruit is that of the flowering plants, then of the reports of these from “Triassic and Jurassic rocks”, “none provide unequivocal evidence of pre-Cretaceous angiosperms” (Patrick Herendeen and colleagues, Nature Plants 3, 2017), so that in the rocks they come after the Jurassic bird and the Devonian land animals. And if “the great sea creatures” of day 5 (1:21) include whales, land animals came before them: “The first whales walked.” (Riley Black, Smithsonian, 2025). Framework: Genesis 1 orders creation by theme, not by clock, with days 4–6 filling the realms made on days 1–3. Temple: in John Walton’s propositions, “The Seven Days of Genesis 1 Relate to the Cosmic Temple Inauguration” and “Do Not Concern Material Origins” (The Lost World of Genesis One, 2009). Evolutionary creation: God creates through the processes science measures, the body by descent (F) and the man alive by God’s breath (2:7), with Adam a historical or representative man (F). The young-earth and gap readings conflict with measurement, the gap reading for life and man only (strong); day-age fits the ages, but with its days in sequence its order conflicts with the fossil order (strong), and with days that overlap it is a reading; the framework, the temple reading and evolutionary creation set the clock aside. The text does not say which it intends.

Register.

Can it all be reconciled? Every clash but one has a reading that removes it. A is reconciled in the texts themselves; B’s day by the texts’ own idiom, with an ancient reading beside it (strong), and its long lives by a reading; C, E and G by readings; F by a genealogical Adam beside a flood of the known world, or by setting the dates aside; H has readings that no text decides, so it stays open; D’s counts come from lists that one tradition recalculated, with figures built to a scheme, so no exact dates follow; I needs no reconciling with Genesis 6; and J is not evidence. The exception: no reading reconciles Genesis 1–11, taken as literal history, with the measured ages, nor with the measured genome where it makes one couple the source of every human genome or leaves eight survivors of a flood (strong).

Does it touch the sequence? Not its spine. No step rests on Adam’s date, on how many first parents there were, on the length of the days, or on what the Nephilim were, and from this ground the spine needs the council before the earth (step 2), which the texts state, and the nations after Babel (steps 7–8), whose place in the story rests on step 7’s link; who those nations were in history, the Flood’s reach and the genome decide, not that link (Physics, Does it touch the sequence?). Two clashes touch local inferences, which can be removed without breaking the chain: H bears on step 5, which already sets the angel reading beside the Seth reading, and G is the reading of step 6.

Physics measures the age of the earth and of the universe, and tests whether its clocks have ever run differently. It finds that no local theory with outcomes fixed in advance fits its experiments; whether chance lies at the root of matter divides its interpretations. It calculates that the constants and starting conditions that permit life lie in a narrow range, a disputed calculation. The texts state a beginning by God’s word, “the fixed order of heaven and earth”, lights made as signs, and acts of God that no law produces. Read as a literal timeline, Genesis 1–11 conflicts with the measured ages, as Before Adam found, and a flood that left eight people conflicts with the measured genome (6). What the texts say of God himself, and of his purpose in an act, lies outside what a measurement can test; the physical effects they give his acts can be measured, and several are measured below. At several points, a beginning, a fixed order, light before the sun, the two can be read together. Each point is graded below.

1. The clocks.

• What physics measures (measured by others). “The rate of decay is conveniently expressed in terms of an isotope's half-life, or the time it takes for one-half of a particular radioactive isotope in a sample to decay.” “Some isotopes, however, decay slowly, and several of these are used as geologic clocks.” (United States Geological Survey). Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years (National Isotope Development Center). Clair Patterson found in 1956 that “Within experimental error, meteorites have one age as determined by three independent radiometric methods.” (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 10); the earth’s age, 4.54 billion years, is given under Before Adam. In 2001 Simon Wilde and colleagues reported “the discovery of a detrital zircon with an age as old as 4,404 ± 8 Myr—about 130 million years older than any previously identified on Earth” (Nature 409). Carbon dating is the short clock: “Radiocarbon (14C) provides a way to date material that contains carbon with an age up to ~50,000 years” (Christopher Bronk Ramsey and colleagues, Science 338, 2012).
• Layers laid down year by year. “Lake Suigetsu contains annually laminated sediments” (Christopher Bronk Ramsey and colleagues, 2012), and in the same paper “The varve-based chronology … provides our best estimate of the true age of the cores for the period ~10.2 to 40.0 kyr B.P.”: layers counted from about 10,200 to 40,000 years ago, with the radiocarbon read beside them, and filled in where they are poorly formed, for “the varve record is curtailed due to the incomplete formation or preservation of annual laminae, necessitating interpolation” (Schlolaut and colleagues, Quaternary Geochronology 13, 2012). Greenland’s ice is counted layer by layer: GICC05 “is a time scale based on annual layer counting” that “continuously covers the past 60 ka” (Svensson and colleagues, Climate of the Past 4, 2008). On the West Antarctic ice sheet, “The chronology is based on counting of annual layers observed in the chemical, dust and electrical conductivity records”, back 31,200 years (Sigl and colleagues, Climate of the Past 12, 2016). Both are checked against a cave record dated another way (6, The Flood). Older ice keeps a longer record, not counted year by year: “a deep ice core from Dome C, Antarctica, that provides a climate record for the past 740,000 years” (EPICA community members, “Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core”, Nature 429, 2004).
• Have the clocks ever run differently? (measured by others). Light from a star that exploded 163,000 light-years away carries the answer: “Supernova 1987A resides 163,000 light-years away.” (NASA), and “The light from SN1987A faded at almost exactly the same rate observed in laboratories for the decay of the radioactive nucleus Cobalt-56 into the stable nucleus Iron-56” (Richard McCray, University of Colorado). On earth, data from “the natural fission reactors which operated about two billion years ago at Oklo (Gabon)” bound any change since then in the fine-structure constant, a constant of nature on which decay rates partly depend, to about one part in ten million (Thibault Damour and Freeman Dyson, 1996).
• The young-earth answer. The Institute for Creation Research’s RATE team: “Within the constraint of a recent supernatural creation, the team proposed past episodes of accelerated radioactive decay.” Its own summary names the cost: “Preliminary thought was given to a further challenge to accelerated decay—the dissipation of vast quantities of generated heat.” (Donald B. DeYoung, ICR, 2023). An old-earth critic, Jeff Zweerink, puts it plainly: “Squeezing billions of years’ (at today’s rates) worth of radioactive decay into a few days or even a year would likely produce so much heat and radiation so as to vaporize Earth’s surface and sterilize all life.” (Reasons to Believe, 2012). Its proposers answer the heat with sinks. In 2000 D. Russell Humphreys proposed that matter loses it to the expanding cosmos; two critics reject that mechanism “because it is wrong, it is ineffective, it is falsified by observational data, and it is theologically flawed” (Glenn Morton and George Murphy, Reports of the National Center for Science Education 24, 2004). In 2018 he proposed that “some of the emitted light could leak directly into hyperspace”, “a good way to get rid of the excess heat generated by accelerated nuclear decay” (Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism).
• A world made mature. One young-earth answer needs no fast decay. Philip Henry Gosse’s Omphalos (1857) held that the world was made with the marks of a past it never had, as Adam was made with a navel; by its construction no measurement can test it. What stands against it is a premise about God, not a measurement: that he does not lay down a record of events that never happened. A young-earth astronomer states it of starlight, “It seems uncharacteristic of God to make illusions like this.” (Lisle, 4 below), and the texts give it ground: “God, who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2), and heavens that “pour forth speech” and “reveal knowledge” (Psalm 19:2). Its rival draws on the texts’ own works made mature: “trees bearing fruit with seed” on the day they are made (Genesis 1:12), and wine that the master of the banquet took for wine kept back, “you have saved the fine wine until now!” (John 2:10).
• The texts. The lights are made as clocks: “let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years” (Genesis 1:14). God appeals to “the fixed order of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25): “Only if this fixed order departed from My presence, declares the LORD, would Israel’s descendants ever cease to be a nation before Me.” (31:36); “Do you know the laws of the heavens?” (Job 38:33).
• Inference. The clocks agree with one another: meteorites have one age by three methods resting on three decays, of uranium to lead, potassium to argon and rubidium to strontium (Patterson). Decay ran at today’s rate in a star 163,000 light-years away, and the fine-structure constant, on which decay rates partly depend, was unchanged when the Oklo reactors ran: no slow drift. A six-thousand-year timeline needs instead brief episodes of fast decay, which those two tests do not reach, or a world made mature. Brief episodes would have to speed the three decays by one factor to leave them one age: follows, from their agreement; and “It is unlikely that a variable rate would affect all the different mechanisms in the same way and to the same extent” (TalkOrigins Archive, CF210). They leave, by their proposers’ own account, vast heat to explain, and the sinks offered for it are proposals, the first rejected by its critics. A world made mature, weighed in the texts, is the weaker side: their mature works are mature, a tree that bears fruit and wine that is wine, but none carries a record of events, as the light of SN 1987A carries the decay of its cobalt; a world made with a record of a history that never happened would have heavens that “reveal knowledge” reveal what never was, from a God who “cannot lie”. Weaker. That the measured ages contradict a literal timeline of Genesis 1–11 is strong (Before Adam, E and F). That the texts’ “fixed order” includes steady decay is a reading: they speak of day and night, sun, moon and stars, not of atoms.

2. The age and the beginning of the universe.

• What physics measures (measured by others). The Planck satellite’s results put the age of the universe at 13.797 ± 0.023 billion years, on the standard model (Planck Collaboration, Astronomy & Astrophysics 641, A6, 2020, Table 1). The universe expands: “To honour the intellectual integrity and the supremely significant discovery by Georges Lemaître, the IAU is pleased to recommend that the expansion of the Universe be referred to as the Hubble–Lemaître law.” (International Astronomical Union, 2018). The heat of its hot, dense early state still fills the sky: the Nobel Prize of 1978 went to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson “for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation”, whose temperature is “2.72548±0.00057 K” (D. J. Fixsen, 2009). In 2024 Webb found what was then “a record-breaking galaxy observed only 290 million years after the big bang” (ESA/Webb, 2024). One figure is unsettled: the expansion rate measured nearby differs from the one Planck predicts, “a 5-sigma difference with H0 predicted by Planck+LCDM” (Adam Riess and colleagues, 2022). Open within physics.
• A beginning? (the theorems, and Lemaître). Stephen Hawking: “One can then apply the theorem of Penrose and myself, to show that time must have a beginning.” (The Beginning of Time, 1996). Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin show that “a cosmological model which is inflating—or just expanding sufficiently fast—must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions” (Physical Review Letters 90, 2003), and add that “some new physics is necessary in order to determine the correct conditions at the boundary”. In 1931 Lemaître wrote that quantum theory “suggests a beginning of the world very different from the present order of Nature” (Nature 127).
• The texts. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1); “the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3); grace given “in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9); glory “before all time, and now, and for all eternity” (Jude 25). The heavens “will all wear out like a garment”, “But You remain the same, and Your years will never end.” (Psalm 102:26–27).
• Stated (Augustine). Time began with the world: “the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time” (City of God 11.6, NPNF); and to the question what God did before it, “That before God made heaven and earth, He made not anything.” (Confessions 11.12, tr. Pilkington).
• Background (Pius XII and Lemaître). On 22 November 1951 Pius XII told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that science had dated the beginning, and drew the conclusion: “La creazione nel tempo, quindi; e perciò un Creatore; dunque Dio!” (‘Creation in time, then; and so a Creator; therefore God!’). Lemaître, priest and physicist, would not use the theory so: “Personally, I consider that such a theory stays completely outside of any metaphysical or religious issue. It leaves the free materialist to deny any transcendent being. For the believer it excludes any attempt at familiarity with God.” (at the Solvay Congress of 1958, as the UCLouvain archives give it); in Helge Kragh’s words, “he was careful not to confuse science and theology and not to use one of the fields as legitimization for the other” (Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2007).
• Inference. Physics measures an expanding universe that was hot and dense 13.8 billion years ago, and its theorems give that expansion a past boundary; what lies at the boundary, the theorems’ own authors leave to new physics. Some physicists build a past without a beginning: Anthony Aguirre and Steven Gratton construct “a self-consistent, geodesically complete, and physically sensible steady-state eternally inflating universe” that “avoids an initial singularity or beginning of time” (Physical Review D 65, 2002), and in Physics World’s report of Roger Penrose’s claim, “space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang” (2010), a claim it calls “bound to prove controversial”. The texts state a beginning by God’s word, and grace given “before time began”. The two agree if physics’ boundary is a true beginning: a reading. That physics proves creation, Lemaître himself denied; that it disproves creation, no measurement shows. No clash with what is measured: follows. Whether the boundary is a beginning is open, with past-eternal models as its rival; were one established, it would clash with a beginning of time.

3. Quantum physics.

• Chance. Einstein would not have it: “I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.” (to Max Born, 4 December 1926). The experiments went against the local world he hoped for: the Nobel Prize of 2022 went to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. They rule out locality joined to definite outcomes, not determinism as such: in Guy Blaylock’s analysis the assumptions behind Bell’s inequality are locality and counterfactual definiteness, “but not scientific realism, determinism, or hidden variables, as is often suggested” (2009). What it means is unsettled. In Bohmian mechanics “the configuration of a system of particles evolves via a deterministic motion choreographed by the wave function” (Sheldon Goldstein, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Hugh Everett III, in Wayne Myrvold’s survey, “proposed that quantum mechanics be taken as it is, without a collapse postulate and without any ‘hidden variables’”, and “Everett proposed that each of these terms be taken to be equally real”, every outcome of an experiment in a branch of its own; Blaylock calls the many-worlds reading “an interpretation that we argue is deterministic, local, and realist, but that nonetheless violates the Bell inequality”. In the same survey, “Extant hidden-variables theories reproduce the quantum probabilities”, while “there is no consensus among physicists or philosophers of physics on the question of what, if anything, the empirical success of quantum theory is telling us about the physical world” (same encyclopedia, 2022).
• The texts on chance. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” (Proverbs 16:33); “not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” (Matthew 10:29); “in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17); the Son is “upholding all things by His powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3).
• Background (divine action). In the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences’ summary of his essay, Robert John Russell argues that if quantum mechanics points to real indeterminism, “then one can construct a robust bottom-up, noninterventionist, approach to objective, mediated, direct divine action”, and “It does not reduce God to a natural cause; instead, God’s action is hidden from science.”
• The quantum ‘nothing’. Vilenkin: “A cosmological model is proposed in which the universe is created by quantum tunneling from literally nothing into a de Sitter space.” (Physics Letters 117B, 1982). The philosopher of physics David Albert answers such claims: “Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff.” (New York Times, 23 March 2012, reviewing Lawrence Krauss). Vilenkin’s nothing has no space, time or matter, but the laws of quantum physics already hold in it. In the texts, what is seen “was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3), and God “calls into being what does not yet exist” (Romans 4:17); of the early readers, 2 Maccabees has God make heaven and earth “of things that were not” (7:28), and Wisdom praises the hand “that made the world of matter without form” (11:17, KJV Apocrypha). The order itself is God’s work: “the fixed order of heaven and earth” that he “established” (Jeremiah 33:25).
• Observers and consciousness (background). “In the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that many (perhaps all) of the symptoms of classicality can be induced in quantum systems by their environments.” (Wojciech Zurek, Reviews of Modern Physics 75, 2003). “None of the mainstream approaches accord any special physical role to conscious observers.” (Myrvold). Eugene Wigner held otherwise: “His conclusion is that consciousness has an influence on the physical world not captured by the laws of quantum mechanics.” (Myrvold, of Wigner). In the brain, Max Tegmark finds quantum coherence lost in 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻²⁰ seconds, where the brain’s own processes take 0.001 to 0.1 seconds, so that the brain “should be thought of as a classical rather than quantum system” (Physical Review E 61, 4194). The schools that build on a cosmic mind are weighed under Newer schools.
• Inference. On the readings with a collapse, physics finds single outcomes that no known prior state fixes; on Bohm’s, the outcomes are fixed in advance, and nonlocally; on Everett’s there are no single outcomes, for every outcome occurs; and there is no consensus on which is right. Even the lot is God’s (Proverbs 16:33), and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). Whether God acts through quantum events is a reading: no text names a mechanism, and on Bohm’s reading and on Everett’s there is no gap to act in. If every fall of the lot occurs in some branch, “its every decision is from the LORD” needs a reading of its own: a reading. The quantum vacuum is not nothing: it is stuff under law (Albert). Whether the texts’ making is out of nothing at all is a reading: Hebrews 11:3 denies only a visible source, and the early readers divide, 2 Maccabees for things that were not, Wisdom for formless matter. On either there is no clash: Vilenkin’s law already holds in his nothing, and the texts make the fixed order itself God’s establishing (Jeremiah 33:25). No conflict. That consciousness steers quantum events is outside every mainstream approach; the texts place the inner life in the spirit (Man) and say nothing of the wave function. Open.

4. Light and time.

• The problem (a young-earth astronomer). “Critics of biblical creation sometimes use distant starlight as an argument against a young universe.” (Jason Lisle, Answers in Genesis, 2007): light from galaxies billions of light-years away has had billions of years to travel.
• Rejected by a young-earth astronomer himself: light made on its way. “But if God created the light beams already on their way, then that means none of the events we see in space (beyond a distance of 6,000 light-years) actually happened.” “It seems uncharacteristic of God to make illusions like this.” (Lisle). The supernova of 1987, 163,000 light-years off, would then be a picture of an explosion that never was.
• Proposals and their critics. D. Russell Humphreys offers “a relativistic cosmology that fits into the biblical timescale of thousands of years” (Creation Ministries International, 2000), in which clocks near the earth run slow: “Light that would take billions of years to reach earth (as measured by clocks in deep space) could reach earth in only thousands of years as measured by clocks on earth.” (Lisle). Samuel Conner and Don Page charged, in Humphreys’s summary of their charge, that it “is actually only a trivial variant of the standard big bang model.” (Creation Ministries International, 2000) and a young-earth physicist, John Hartnett, wrote, “Yet it still has to be demonstrated how the mechanism he suggested actually gives us the millions and billions of years of time dilation.” (International Conference on Creationism, 2008). Lisle’s own proposal is a convention of timing: “Lisle adopts a different synchrony convention where light travels at infinite speed in one direction and half the speed of light on the return trip.” The convention alone cannot be tested: “Unfortunately, Lisle’s choice of conventions is untestable, as he acknowledges” (Zweerink, 2012). The model built on it can: “However, Lisle uses the ASC to develop a model that does make predictions about how the universe should look.”, namely that “distant and local regions of the universe should appear the same and show evidence of youth”; and its condition on the direction of light would give “a detectable gravitational field”, “and scientists measure no such field” (Zweerink). Distant regions do not appear the same (measured by others). “A prediction of the standard hot Big-Bang model is the linear increase with redshift of the black-body temperature of the CMB”, and the temperature measured in distant gas clouds rises so (P. Noterdaeme and colleagues, 2010); and “the star-formation rate density peaked approximately 3.5 Gyr after the Big Bang” (Piero Madau and Mark Dickinson, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 52, 2014).
• Relativity is real (measured by others). Satellite clocks “have gravitational and motional frequency shifts which are so large that, without carefully accounting for numerous relativistic effects, the system would not work.” (Neil Ashby, on the Global Positioning System, Living Reviews in Relativity 6, 2003). Gerald Schroeder builds the six days on it: “Using a universal time clock based on the stretching of the wavelengths of light as the universe expands, he concludes that the universe is 15.75 billion years old.” (Frank Sonleitner’s review, NCSE); to the physicist Victor Stenger, “Schroeder’s use of quark confinement as the defining moment for his cosmic time scale is completely arbitrary.” (1998).
• The texts. “For in Your sight a thousand years are but a day that passes” (Psalm 90:4); “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8), said of God’s patience: “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise” (3:9). Light comes first: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), the sun on the fourth day, “the greater light to rule the day” (1:16).
• Inference. Distant starlight is a problem only for a young universe. The answer that God made light on its way is rejected by a young-earth astronomer, Lisle; Humphreys’s model, in a young-earth physicist’s words, still has to be shown to give the needed dilation, though Humphreys holds that it works; and Lisle’s convention cannot be tested, but the young universe he builds on it predicts distant regions like ours, and they are not: it conflicts with measurement, strong. Relativity’s time dilation is real; that it yields the needed ages has not been shown. For the readings of Genesis 1 that set the clock aside (Before Adam, E), there is no problem. Light before the sun is no problem on the readings that set the clock aside. On the day-age reading it needs a reading of its own: physics’ first light is the light of the early universe and of its first stars, which shone long before the earth formed, 4.54 billion years ago, while Genesis makes “the stars as well” on day 4, after the earth and its plants (1:11–16; Before Adam, ways readers fit them). And “a day is like a thousand years” is said of God’s patience; even read as a clock, it gives six thousand years, not billions (Before Adam, E). Follows, at each of these points.

5. Order, fine-tuning and the end.

• What physics measures, and calculates. “The claim is that in the space of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the set that permits the evolution of intelligent life is very small.” (Luke A. Barnes, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 29, 2012), who adds, “I do not attempt to defend any conclusion based on the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.” “Just six numbers, imprinted in the ‘big bang,’ determine the essential features of our entire physical world.” (Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers). The universe also began smooth, in a state Roger Penrose calculates to fill one part in ten to the power 10¹²³ of the space of possible states (as Sheldon Goldstein and Huw Price report him). That is a ratio of volumes, and a chance only on a chosen measure. Sean Carroll defends one, on which “the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny”, and asks himself “why probabilities should be uniform in this measure rather than some other one” (2014); for Joshua Schiffrin and Robert Wald, “the measure of phase space is infinite and the computation of probabilities depends very strongly on how the infinity is regulated” (2012). The constants meet the same question. McGrew, McGrew and Vestrup argued that a measure spread evenly over an unbounded range “cannot be normalized and hence the relevant probabilities cannot be calculated” (as Luke Barnes reports them); Barnes answers that such concerns “are perfectly legitimate, but are not specifically a problem with fine-tuning” (2017).
• Readings of it. Fred Hoyle, no believer in the God of the texts: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” (Engineering and Science 45, 1981). The rival: “Since the physical constants can be different in other universes, the fine-tunings that appear necessary for the emergence of life may also be explained.” “Nevertheless, many physicists remain uncomfortable with the multiverse proposal, since it is highly speculative and perhaps untestable.” (Bernard Carr, ed., Universe or Multiverse?, Cambridge, 2007).
• The texts. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship” (Romans 1:20); “He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18); “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Of the end: the heavens “will all wear out like a garment” (Psalm 102:26), and “The heavens will disappear with a roar” (2 Peter 3:10). Physics finds the expansion speeding up: the Nobel Prize of 2011 went “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”.
• Inference. The constants are measured; that the range of them that permits life is narrow is a calculation, and a disputed one: a later review finds that “viable universes exist over a range of parameter space” (Fred C. Adams, 2019). The improbability of the smooth beginning is a calculation too, on a measure that physics does not fix. What it means divides physicists, between design, many universes and laws not yet known, and the review quoted first defends no conclusion from it. The texts say creation shows God’s power and was made to be inhabited; they name no constant. That fine-tuning points to a designer is a reading, with many universes and unknown law as its rivals. That the designer is the God of the texts, physics cannot show: Hoyle read a “superintellect” from the same facts without him. Not shown, by physics; the texts state it of their God (Romans 1:20; Isaiah 45:18). That Psalm 102:26 foretells the running down of the universe is weak: its image is a garment, and its point is that God remains. That the accelerating expansion is the end of 2 Peter 3:10 is weak: the letter’s end is an act of God that brings “a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (3:13; Heaven), not a physical decay.

6. Miracles and natural law.

• Two definitions. David Hume: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature” (An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 10). C. S. Lewis: “The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern” (Miracles, as the C. S. Lewis Institute quotes it). The texts call them signs, written “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31), and at times name a natural means at a chosen hour: “the LORD drove back the sea with a strong east wind” (Exodus 14:21).
• Joshua’s long day. “O sun, stand still over Gibeon” (Joshua 10:12), and “Is this not written in the Book of Jashar?” (10:13). The verse goes on: “So the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.” (10:13), and “There has been no day like it before or since” (10:14). Hugh Ross: “Scientifically, any stoppage in Earth’s rotation or dramatic alterations of the positions of the Sun and Moon would have wiped out all life on Earth.” “The miracle described in Joshua 10 likely is limited to the geography of the Valley of Aijalon.” (Reasons to Believe, 2021). And “The verb used to refer to the sun’s actions in the original poetic fragment in Joshua 10:12-13 can be translated ‘be silent’ (or ‘be dark’) instead of ‘stand still.’” (Enter the Bible, Luther Seminary). Measured: that verb, dāmam, stands in twenty-nine verses; elsewhere it is used of being silent, still or at rest, “Be still before the LORD” (Psalm 37:7), “But Aaron remained silent.” (Leviticus 10:3), and of being silenced in death, “all her warriors will be silenced in that day” (Jeremiah 49:26). But 10:13 says too that the sun ʿāmad, ‘stood’, “in the middle of the sky”, and the Greek of 10:12 reads στήτω ὁ ἥλιος, ‘let the sun stand’. Inference: the ‘silent’ reading reaches the verb dāmam, not the clause that the sun stood and delayed its setting; Ross’s local sign keeps that clause and limits it to the valley. Which it was is a reading.
• The darkness at the cross. “darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour”, “The sun was darkened” (Luke 23:44–45). Measured: the critical Greek reads τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος, ‘the sun failing’, of ἐκλείπω, the verb whose noun gives English its ‘eclipse’, and marks it as a variant. Stated (Julius Africanus, about 220): “For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day according to the moon”, and “an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun”; “how then should an eclipse be supposed to happen when the moon is almost diametrically opposite the sun?” “But it was a darkness induced by God, because the Lord happened then to suffer.” (Chronography 18, ANF). That a solar eclipse cannot fall at full moon follows from the motions of sun and moon, as Africanus says.
• The Flood. “all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered” (Genesis 7:19). The young-earth answer for the ice: flood geologists build “models that assume the ice sheets began forming shortly after the Flood about 4,500 years ago” (Jake Hebert, ICR, 2014), and “Glaciologists do measure annual layers near the top of the Greenland ice cores, but deeper down the cores they are picking up subannual layers (storm layers and other variations).” (Michael Oard, Larry Vardiman and Carl Wieland, CMI, 2006); and of the Antarctic cores they write, “Annual layers cannot be derived from ice cores drilled on top of the Antarctic Ice Sheet”. The counts answer it on its own ground. Matched, climate event to climate event, with the cave record of Hulu in China, “GICC05 compares well to the time scale of that record with absolute age differences of less than 800 years throughout the 60 ka period” (Svensson and colleagues, 2008); on the West Antarctic ice sheet the counted layers reach 31,200 years, and against the same cave “WD2014 had an accuracy of better than 1 % of the age” (Sigl and colleagues, 2016), the cave being one of “two high-accuracy, absolutely dated chronologies”. Storm layers counted as years could not keep that step with a clock of another kind. Nor does the answer reach the lake’s layers (1 above) or the radiometric clocks. The same book uses “all the earth” of the known world: “every nation came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth” (Genesis 41:57); and Acts 2:5 has “every nation under heaven” in Jerusalem.
• The Flood’s human toll (measured by others). The texts give it one: “all mankind” perished (7:21), “only Noah and those with him in the ark remained” (7:23), and “In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water” (1 Peter 3:20). A toll of eight is a genetic event: “There were eight people on the Ark: Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, holding 10 lineages at most.” “Looking across the genome, the median TMR10A is approximately 180,000 years ago.” So “Apart from miraculous intervention or interbreeding between Noah’s lineage and others, the TMR10A rules out a Noahic bottleneck more recent than this time.” And every man since would carry Noah’s Y chromosome, where “Y-adam is estimated to have lived, roughly, around 150,000 years ago.” (S. Joshua Swamidass, 2022). The answers go two ways, as he reports them: Nathaniel Jeanson, a biologist with Answers in Genesis, keeps the date “by using a mutation rate 40x higher than the consensus mutation rate across the genome”, and Reasons to Believe “places Noah at about 180,000 years ago”.
• Measured. The Flood’s own words set its limit “upon the earth” (7:21), and ʾereṣ, its word for the earth in 7:19–23, is also ‘land’: ‘the land of Egypt’ is ʾereṣ miṣrayim in 211 verses. The phrase of 7:19, “under all the heavens”, stands in seven verses; in Deuteronomy 2:25 it is said of the nations who “will hear the reports of you”, on the eve of the war with Sihon (2:24). And kol hāʾādām, “all mankind” in 7:21, is “all the people” of the cities taken in Joshua 11:14.
• Inference (the Flood). A planet-wide flood about 4,500 years ago conflicts with the measured ages: strong, on the ground of 1 above. A flood that left eight people of all mankind conflicts with the measured genome at either count’s date, wherever it fell: strong. Its answers do not remove that: a mutation rate forty times the consensus is not supported, and Noah 180,000 years ago gives up both counts as a clock (Before Adam, D). A flood of the known world, told in the idiom of Genesis 41:57, removes both clashes if other lines of mankind lived beyond it: then “all mankind” and the eight are that land’s, a limit the passages leave to the sense of ʾereṣ (R3, R4). A reading. On it, the nations of Genesis 10 are the nations of the known world (Does it touch the sequence?, below). The covenant after it reads with the flood it follows, “Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood” (9:11): on that reading, its “all” is that flood’s all (R3).
• The star of Bethlehem. “We saw His star in the east”, and it “went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the Child was” (Matthew 2:2, 9). Stated (Chrysostom): “Thus, that this star was not of the common sort, or rather not a star at all, as it seems at least to me, but some invisible power transformed into this appearance, is in the first place evident from its very course.” (Homily 6 on Matthew, NPNF). Of the planetary reading: “Although Kepler was the first person to calculate that the triple conjunction had occurred in 7 B.C., he actually suggested something quite different.” (John Mosley, Griffith Observatory, 1981): Kepler suggested that the conjunctions brought a new star, and that it was the star of Bethlehem. Inference: that the star went ahead of them and stood over the place where the child was is stated (Matthew 2:9). That it was no ordinary star is Chrysostom’s reading; astronomers read the same verbs as the language of a planet’s course, with Jupiter, as the Magi went south from Jerusalem, “which at its stationary point was standing still over Bethlehem” (Craig Chester, Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy, Imprimis, 1993). Whether it was a planet at its stationary point, a conjunction, a new star, a comet or a light sent from God is a reading.
• Hume’s argument. Hume’s case does not rest on his definition. “A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence”, and the rule follows: “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish” (Enquiry 10). Bart Ehrman applies it to the resurrection: “Historians can only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition a miracle is the least probable occurrence.” William Lane Craig answers that the improbable event is a natural one: “That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable.” “But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead.” (their debate at the College of the Holy Cross, 28 March 2006).
• Inference (miracles). On Hume’s definition a miracle breaks the laws; on Lewis’s it adds an event that the laws then carry. Where the added event adds matter, as when “five thousand men who had eaten the loaves” left “twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish” (Mark 6:43–44), the laws carry it only if the conservation of energy binds a system on which nothing outside nature acts, and not a system on which God acts. That is Robert Larmer’s premise: the symmetries behind conservation “are only implied in the absence of any intervening cause, that is to say in causally isolated systems” (Religious Studies 44, 2008); Kirk McDermid, whom he answers, seeks to show that Larmer’s account “of how God might produce a miracle without violating any laws of nature is radically flawed”. On that premise the texts’ “fixed order” and their signs are consistent: the order holds, and God acts within the world he holds together. Follows, on that premise. On its rival, that energy is neither made nor lost on any condition, a sign that adds matter breaks the order, as Hume’s definition says; physics measures systems on which nothing beyond nature is shown to act, and does not decide between them: a reading. Hume’s rule weighs the witnesses against the course of nature, so its verdict turns on the probability it gives the event before the witnesses are heard: follows, from its terms. Ehrman sets that probability as for an event of nature, Craig as for an act of God, and which is right turns on whether God exists and acts, which no measurement settles. Whether a given miracle happened is therefore not a question physics can decide: the texts state the signs, and the witnesses to the resurrection are weighed under Confirmations.

7. Astrology and the host of heaven.

• Stated. The lights are “signs to mark the seasons and days and years” (Genesis 1:14): times, not fates. The host of heaven is what the LORD “has apportioned to all the nations under heaven”, and Israel must not “bow down and worship” it (Deuteronomy 4:19; step 8). “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by the signs in the heavens” (Jeremiah 10:2); Babylon’s “astrologers who observe the stars, who monthly predict your fate” cannot save her (Isaiah 47:13). The Magi followed a star, and it brought them to worship a child, not the stars (Matthew 2:2, 11).
• Stated (Augustine). Against the astrologers he set the twins of Genesis, born under one sky: of Esau and Jacob, “So great a difference existed in their lives and manners, so great a dissimilarity in their actions” (City of God 5.4, tr. Dods). Paul notes that the choice between them was made “before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad” (Romans 9:11).
• Measured by others. In Shawn Carlson’s double-blind test, astrologers matched birth charts to personality profiles, and “their choices were no better than random” (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory report LBL-20480, 1983, submitted to Nature).
• Inference. In the sequence the stars are the host apportioned to the nations (step 8); to read one’s fate in them is to look for guidance to what God gave to others, which the texts forbid; tested, the reading fails. Follows, from Deuteronomy 4:19 and Jeremiah 10:2, with the test as a witness.

8. Life on other worlds.

• Stated. The texts know beings beyond the earth: the angels are “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1:14), and the sons of God “shouted for joy” when the earth was founded (Job 38:4–7; step 2). All things were made in the Son, “things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). Before the heavens the psalmist asks, “what is man that You are mindful of him” (Psalm 8:3–4). The “other sheep that are not of this fold” (John 10:16) are, in that verse, those who will hear his voice and make “one flock”.
• Measured by others. NASA’s head of science, Thomas Zurbuchen, told the House Science Committee on 26 April 2017, “And while we haven't found definitive signs of life elsewhere just yet, our search is making remarkable progress”. Of unidentified objects, the Pentagon’s office for them reported in 2024 that “AARO has found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.” (Acting Director Timothy Phillips, 6 March 2024).
• Inference. The texts neither affirm nor deny life on other worlds, and none has been found. Open. That the sons of God were visitors from other planets does not fit what the texts say they are: of the created host, called angels in the Greek, present when the earth was founded (step 2, strong), and the angels are spirits (Hebrews 1:14). Moderate: how such spirits could take wives is open (Before Adam, H). That John 10:16 speaks of other worlds is weak: its own verse names the hearers.

Register.

Can physics and the texts be reconciled? Yes, with one exception, which Before Adam also finds: Genesis 1–11 read as literal history conflicts with what the clocks measure, in its six thousand years and in a planet-wide flood about 4,500 years ago, and with what the genome measures, in a flood that left eight people (strong). The young-earth answers do not remove it: the heat of fast decay has only proposed sinks, the first rejected by its critics; Lisle’s young universe conflicts with the distant one, and Humphreys’s model is not yet shown to work; and a world made with the marks of a past it never had is the weaker side against the texts’ God, who cannot lie. Everything else reconciles: on the readings that set Genesis 1’s clock aside, on a flood of the known world, on Lewis’s account of miracle with its premise about conservation (6), and on the texts’ claims about God himself and his purposes, which no measurement can confirm or refute. Where physics itself is unsettled, on the meaning of the quantum, on the expansion rate and on what lies at the beginning, the open points stay open.

Does it touch the sequence? Not its spine. No step rests on the age of the universe, the clocks or the quantum. Step 6 needs the Flood as an event the texts tell, not its reach. Step 7 joins Deuteronomy 32:8 to the division of the nations of Genesis 10, which “spread out after the flood” (10:32), and to Babel, in the order the story tells; it needs no year for either. How far the Flood reached, and who outlived it, decide who those nations were in history (6, The Flood), not the link between Deuteronomy 32:8 and Genesis 10–11. One point bears on step 8: the host of heaven “apportioned to all the nations” is the sky the astrologers read, and the texts forbid seeking one’s fate in what God gave to others. And one bears on step 2: the sons of God were there when the earth was founded, as spirits, not as visitors from other worlds (moderate).

Each school below claims to settle part of what this document leaves open. Each is set against the texts by the same method: what it says, in its own or its publisher’s words; what the texts state on the point; and the result.

Conscious creation.

• Its claim, in its own words. James Allen (1864–1912), in a book cataloged under New Thought (Project Gutenberg 4507, as GITenberg gives its record), builds on an aphorism from the King James Proverbs 23:7, in his words “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he”, which “not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life.” Man is “the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny”; “The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought”; “Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” It reaches the body and suffering: “Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought.”; “Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction.”; and “Even at birth the soul comes to its own”. It places the shaping power within: the “divinity that shapes our ends”, Allen writes, “is in ourselves; it is our very self.” Its mechanism runs through habit: “A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.” Widened from a man’s circumstances to the world itself, the claim meets analytic idealism, for which there is only cosmic consciousness and each living mind is one of its alters (above).
• Measured. Proverbs 23:7’s verb, šāʿar, ‘reckon’, stands nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, and the noun of the same letters, ‘measure’, once, in Isaac’s “hundredfold” (Genesis 26:12, mēʾâ šĕʿārîm, ‘a hundred measures’). The King James “heart” in “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” renders nepeš, ‘soul’; the verse’s second “heart” is lēb. Where the Hebrew has the verb, the Greek has τρίχα, ‘a hair’, the same letters read as a noun: as if one swallowed a hair, so he eats and drinks.
• The texts. In its passage the saying is about a stingy host: “Do not eat the bread of a stingy man, and do not crave his delicacies; for he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost. ‘Eat and drink,’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you.” (Proverbs 23:6–7). The Creator is not his creatures’ thought: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1), and men “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). The sufferer is not blamed for his suffering: of a man blind from birth, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.” (John 9:2–3); of the Galileans and the eighteen of Siloam, “Do you think that they were more sinful than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.” (Luke 13:1–5); and Job’s friend, who asked, “Who, being innocent, has ever perished?” (Job 4:7), is rebuked: “you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.” (42:7). Plans and prayer stand under God’s will: “A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9); “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15); “Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39). Where the two meet: “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2); “think on these things” (Philippians 4:8); “For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21); “Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.” (Galatians 6:7).
• Inference. Proverbs 23:7 does not state the view: in its passage it exposes a host whose hidden reckoning belies his welcome, and its rare verb counts the cost; it makes nothing. As a reading of the verse, not supported. That every suffering is the effect of wrong thought, “Even at birth” (Allen), is ruled out: John 9:3 says of a man blind from birth that neither he nor his parents sinned, Luke 13:2–5 denies that those who suffered were worse sinners, and Job 42:7 rebukes the friend who reasoned from suffering to fault. That the self is the divine power that shapes its ends sets the creature where the texts set the Creator and his will (Romans 1:25; Proverbs 16:9; James 4:15): ruled out. Where it holds that conduct and character flow from the heart, and that what a man thinks on shapes what he becomes, it agrees with the texts (Mark 7:21; Romans 12:2; Philippians 4:8); and Allen’s own mechanism, thought into habit and habit into circumstance, is a sowing and reaping the texts also state, under a God who “is not to be mocked” (Galatians 6:7), not a law within the self: consistent. As a metaphysics, set aside; as counsel on the mind, consistent. Beside the rows above: analytic idealism makes one cosmic consciousness all that is, cosmopsychism makes the conscious universe the ground of every fact, and conscious creation gives each mind the shaping of its own world; each is set aside where it makes a creature, cosmic or single, the maker or ground of what God made (Romans 1:25), and each is consistent where it keeps to the creature’s own part. The problem of evil itself is weighed under God’s attributes and Good, evil and free will.

Not covered. C. John Collins’s analogical days, the day-age school of Reasons to Believe, and writers on the end of the lost beyond those quoted as background under Hell (the hell section rests on the texts).

Result. No school settles every question. Those that are consistent with the texts offer readings of what the texts leave open, and the open points stay open. Those that claim to settle everything, analytic idealism, cosmopsychism read without limit, conscious creation taken as a metaphysics, the Course and the Hermetic writings, do it by denying what the texts state; the Urantia Book is not evidence; and Wink’s account, taken as the whole account of the powers, is set aside by R4.

Some of the texts’ words have taken on another sense in English, and a reader who brings the modern sense to them finds a cruelty or a contradiction the texts do not state. Rule R4 keeps each word in its plain sense unless its own passage requires another, and a word’s plain sense is the one its passages give it, not the one English has acquired since. Each entry sets the modern sense beside the word’s own passages, with the Hebrew or Greek counted where the count decides.

The character of God.

• Jealous (qannāʾ; ζῆλος). Read today as envy. In its passages, a husband’s claim on his bride against rivals: “the LORD, whose name is Jealous” forbids “any other god” (Exodus 34:14), and Paul’s “godly jealousy” keeps a bride for Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2); the same Greek noun is the rivals’ jealousy when they “saw the crowds” (Acts 13:45), and a work of the flesh (Galatians 5:20). That the LORD’s jealousy is a claim, not envy: strong (Skeptics’ questions, 27).
• Hate (śānēʾ; μισέω). Read today as loathing. Where a passage weighs one love against another, it means to love less. Leah is “unloved” (Genesis 29:31), in Hebrew śĕnûʾâ, ‘hated’, when Jacob “loved Rachel more than Leah” (29:30); Luke’s “does not hate his father and mother” (Luke 14:26) is Matthew’s “loves his father or mother more than Me” (Matthew 10:37). Strong. Where the passage gives it evil for its object, the word keeps its full force: “To fear the LORD is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13). “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” stands in two passages, and each gives it a sense. In Malachi, where it first stands, it is said of Edom, the nation, whose mountains are “a wasteland”, called “the Land of Wickedness, and a people with whom the LORD is indignant forever” (Malachi 1:2–4): the full force, against a people the passage calls wicked. In Romans it is said of a choosing made before the twins “had done anything good or bad” (Romans 9:11–13). Stated, each in its passage.
• Fear (yirʾâ; φόβος). Read today as terror. In its passages, terror where enemies or danger are its object, “Fear and trembling grip me” (Psalm 55:5), and where God is its object, a fear that keeps from sin, which one verse sets against the people’s fright: “Do not be afraid,” Moses says, “so that the fear of Him may be before you, to keep you from sinning” (Exodus 20:20), the verb and the noun of one root, yrʾ. Of the noun’s 42 verses, 37 are the fear of God, named or, in three verses of Job, understood, as in “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10); the other five are the dread of enemies, of a people, of thorns or of a vision, or a land’s terror (Psalm 55:5; Deuteronomy 2:25; Isaiah 7:25; Ezekiel 1:18; 30:13). The fear that love drives out is the one that “involves punishment” (1 John 4:18). Measured; the sense of the fear of God is stated in Exodus 20:20.
• Wrath (ʾap; ὀργή). Read today as rage, a temper. In its passages, his settled opposition to evil, slow to kindle and quick to pass: “slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion” (Exodus 34:6); “For His anger is fleeting, but His favor lasts a lifetime.” (Psalm 30:5); “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men” (Romans 1:18). Stated.
• Holy (qōdeš; qādôš). Read today as pious, or prim. In its passages, set apart for God: ground (Exodus 3:5), an oil (30:32) and a tithe (Leviticus 27:30) are holy, and none of them is pious. Of God, it is his otherness and his purity: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). Measured; follows.

Persons and titles.

• Angel (malʾāk; ἄγγελος). Read today as a winged being by nature. In its passages, a messenger, by office: Haggai is “the messenger of the LORD” (Haggai 1:13), malʾak YHWH, the title of the angel of the LORD, and “I will send My messenger” (Malachi 3:1) is malʾākî. Which beings bear the office, each passage tells (steps 2 and 5). Measured.
• Satan (śāṭān). Read today as a proper name only. In its passages, ‘adversary’: “the LORD raised up against Solomon an adversary, Hadad the Edomite” (1 Kings 11:14), a man; and the angel of the LORD “stood in the road to oppose him” (Numbers 22:22), as a śāṭān to Balaam. The satan of Job is the accuser, and that the New Testament gives its devil that office is strong (step 10). Measured.
• Lucifer. Read today as the devil’s name in the Bible. In its passage, the Latin word for the “day star” of Isaiah 14:12, in a song “against the king of Babylon” (14:4); the Hebrew word, hêlēl, stands only there. That the song tells of the devil is a reading (step 4). Measured.
• Christ (Χριστός). Read today as a surname. In its passages, a title: “We have found the Messiah”, says Andrew, and John glosses the word, μεθερμηνευόμενον χριστός, ‘translated, Christ’ (John 1:41); it names the anointed king of Psalm 2:2, “His Anointed One”. Stated.
• Firstborn (bĕkôr; πρωτότοκος). Read today as made first. In most of its passages, born first: of bĕkôr’s 96 verses, 91 name a first child, the heir of “a double portion” (Deuteronomy 21:17), or a beast’s first young. In five a passage gives it rank, or makes it the chief of its kind: David, Jesse’s youngest (1 Samuel 16:11), is made “My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27); Israel, a nation, is “My firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22); Ephraim, the younger (Genesis 48:14), “is My firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9); and “the firstborn of the poor” and “the firstborn of death” are the chief of their kind (Isaiah 14:30; Job 18:13). Measured. In Colossians 1:15 the passage decides: “firstborn over all creation” is said of the one in whom “all things were created” (1:16), who is “before all things” (1:17), “so that in all things He may have preeminence” (1:18). There it is rank: strong. And since nothing is created through itself, he is not one of the things created: follows, on R3, which reads ‘all’ with the limits its passage states. The rival makes him the first thing made, through whom the rest were made, and so reads “all things” as all other things, a limit the passage does not state, where 1 Corinthians 15:27 states its own. Proverbs 8:22, where no ‘all’ decides, is weighed under Mysteries, 4.
• One and only (μονογενής; the King James “only begotten”). Read today as a son begotten. In its passages, ‘only’: of its nine New Testament verses, three are an only child, “the only son of his mother” (Luke 7:12; 8:42; 9:38), one is Isaac, and five are the Son (Gap 3). Measured. Hebrews 11:17 calls Isaac Abraham’s “one and only son”, though Ishmael was his son too (Genesis 16:15), for “Through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned” (Hebrews 11:18): there the word cannot mean an only child, or the one son begotten, and names the one son of the promise. Follows. Of the Son, whether John means ‘one and only’, as the BSB renders it, or ‘only begotten’ is a reading; either way the word makes him the only one, which is what Gap 3 needs.

Man and woman.

• Man (ʾādām). Read today as the male. In its passages, humankind as well: “So God created man in His own image”, and “male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27); “He called them ‘man.’” (5:2). Stated.
• Helper (ʿēzer). Read today as an assistant, a lesser. In its passages, one who comes to the rescue, most often God: of its twenty-one verses, sixteen name God’s help, “He is our help and our shield” (Psalm 33:20), “My help comes from the LORD” (121:2), and two name the woman, “a suitable helper” (Genesis 2:18, 20). The word itself gives no rank. Measured.
• Submit (ὑποτάσσω). Read today as one-way subjection. In Ephesians it stands in a mutual frame: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (5:21), whose verb the next verse borrows, for in the critical Greek 5:22 has no verb of its own; and the husband’s part is to love “just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (5:25). Measured. What it asks of a wife is a reading (Skeptics’ questions, 15).
• Slave, servant (ʿebed; δοῦλος). Read today as chattel, for life. In its passages, a word for every kind of service, ʿebed in 714 verses: “Moses the servant of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 34:5); “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1); the Hebrew servant who “shall go free” in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2). The Law’s lifelong case is the foreigner bought (Leviticus 25:44–46; Skeptics’ questions, 14). Measured.

Law and life.

• Abomination (tôʿēbâ). Read today as the worst of sins, or as the word that sets Leviticus 18 apart from Leviticus 11. In its passages, one word, in 112 verses, for many things the LORD rejects: the silver on idols (Deuteronomy 7:25), unclean food (14:3), dishonest dealing (25:16) and pride (Proverbs 16:5), all “detestable” in the BSB, and the sexual sins of Leviticus 18 and 20, the only chapters of Leviticus where it stands. Leviticus 11 calls the creatures without fins and scales by another word, šeqeṣ (11:10). So the word does not rank or sort the commands; the New Testament sorts them (Old covenant and new, 6). Measured.
• Murder (rāṣaḥ). Read today, after the King James “Thou shalt not kill.”, as any killing. In its passages, the killing of a person by a person, by malice or by accident: most of its forty verses are in the laws of the cities of refuge (Numbers 35; Deuteronomy 19; Joshua 20–21), none tells of a battle, and twice it names a killing the Law allows: the avenger’s (Numbers 35:27) and the murderer’s own execution (35:30). So “You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13) does not of itself forbid war or judgment, which the Law treats elsewhere. Measured.
• World (κόσμος). Read today as the planet, or as people in general. In its passages, either, as the passage decides: “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16), and “Do not love the world” (1 John 2:15), the order of people turned from God. One word, two senses, in one writer. Follows (R4).
• Flesh (σάρξ). Read today as the body, and the body as bad. In its passages, the body, which is good, “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), or the self turned against God, “The acts of the flesh are obvious” (Galatians 5:19). Follows (R4; Man, Not trapped in matter).
• Faith (πίστις). Read today as belief without evidence. In its passages, trust, and faithfulness: “God’s faithfulness” (Romans 3:3) is τὴν πίστιν τοῦ θεοῦ; and the Gospels give their signs as grounds, “these are written so that you may believe” (John 20:31), as Paul names witnesses “most of whom are still living” (1 Corinthians 15:6). Stated.
• Revelation (ἀποκάλυψις). Read today, as ‘apocalypse’, as a catastrophe. In its passage, an unveiling, the book’s first word: “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants” (Revelation 1:1). Measured.

Words taken up where they stand. Virgin, ʿalmâ (Skeptics’ questions, 21); God’s “regretted” (God’s attributes, 2); “create evil”, raʿ (God’s attributes, 3); gods, ʾĕlōhîm (Gap 3); sorcery, φαρμακεία (Wine, plants and desire, 5); eternal, αἰώνιος, and the four words behind ‘hell’ (Hell under the four attributes); soul, nepeš (Man).

Inference. Read by R4, no entry here needs a sense its own passages do not give; where a word has two senses, its passage decides between them; and a modern sense carried into a passage that gives another would set the text against its own context or against another text (R2). The rule that reads “sons of God” and “all rule” in their passages reads these words the same way. Follows.

For the sequence. The sequence’s own words are read so: ʾĕlōhîm, which names God and the gods (Gap 3); the sons of God, whom step 2 places among the created host (strong); the satan, an office before a name (step 10); and ‘all’, with the limits its passage states (R3).

In one sentence. Jealous, hate, fear, firstborn, helper and the rest mean in the texts what their own passages make them mean, and where a word has two senses the passage decides: jealous is a husband’s claim, not envy (strong); hate is a lesser love where two loves are weighed (strong), a choosing in Romans 9, and keeps its full force against evil and against Edom; fear is the dread of enemies and, of God, a fear that keeps from sin; firstborn is the first child, and rank where a passage gives it, as Colossians does (strong); helper is rescue; and read so, they do not carry the senses English has given them since.

These are questions skeptics often ask. Each is put in a skeptic’s own words where one has put it sharply, then set against what the texts state, and graded. The first thirteen are taken up in sections of their own:

• 1. Evil and suffering: God’s attributes, 4; Good, evil and free will.
• 2. Hell: Hell under the four attributes.
• 3. Science and Genesis: Before Adam; Physics.
• 4. Miracles: Physics, 6.
• 5. Whether Jesus lived, and whether the Bible’s history holds: Confirmations.
• 6. The exodus: Confirmations, Egypt and Moses, and The wilderness and the conquest, in the ground.
• 7. Myths older than Genesis: Older tablets.
• 8. Whether scribes changed the text: The Masoretic change.
• 9. The Trinity, and whether Jesus claimed to be God: God’s attributes, 5; The One and the other, 2; Gap 3.
• 10. The conquest of Canaan: The conquest; and killing in God’s name today, Terrorism and religious extremism.
• 11. Those who never heard: Salvation, 5.
• 12. The resurrection: Confirmations, The resurrection, as history.
• 13. Possession or illness: Demons and possession.

The sixteen below complete the list.

14. Slavery.

• The question. Why did God not abolish slavery in Israel, but give rules by which Israelites could keep foreign slaves for life?
• The case, in its defenders’ own words. Before the Civil War the Bible was argued for slavery: “I shall be able to make it appear that the institution of slavery has received, in the first place,” “1st. The sanction of the Almighty in the Patriarchal age.” “2d. That it was incorporated into the only National Constitution which ever emanated from God.” “3d. That its legality was recognized, and its relative duties regulated, by Jesus Christ in his kingdom” (Thornton Stringfellow, A Brief Examination of Scripture Testimony on the Institution of Slavery, 1841): the Law’s permission, and the New Testament’s rules. The skeptic takes the same texts and draws the opposite conclusion about the book.
• Stated: the hardest texts. The Law sets its own people apart: “If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.” “Because the Israelites are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt, they are not to be sold as slaves.” (Leviticus 25:39–42). Of foreigners: “Your menservants and maidservants shall come from the nations around you, from whom you may purchase them.” “You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.” (25:44–46). Of a servant given a wife, “the woman and her children shall belong to her master” (Exodus 21:4). “If a man strikes his manservant or maidservant with a rod, and the servant dies by his hand, he shall surely be punished. However, if the servant gets up after a day or two, the owner shall not be punished, since the servant is his property.” (Exodus 21:20–21). “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear” (Ephesians 6:5); “Servants, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but even to those who are unreasonable.” (1 Peter 2:18). And Paul writes to Onesimus’s master, “I am sending back to you him who is my very heart.” (Philemon 12).
• Stated: the limits and the turn. “Whoever kidnaps another man must be put to death, whether he sells him or the man is found in his possession.” (Exodus 21:16). A Hebrew servant goes free in the seventh year (21:2); an eye or a tooth knocked out sets a servant free (21:26–27); “Do not return a slave to his master if he has taken refuge with you.” “Let him live among you wherever he chooses, in the town of his pleasing. Do not oppress him.” (Deuteronomy 23:15–16). Job: “If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or maidservant when they made a complaint against me,” “Did not He who made me in the womb also make them? Did not the same One form us in the womb?” (Job 31:13–15). In the New Testament the law is “for slave traders” (1 Timothy 1:10); masters are told, “Give up your use of threats, because you know that He who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him.” (Ephesians 6:9); “if you can gain your freedom, take the opportunity” (1 Corinthians 7:21); Onesimus is to be received “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a beloved brother” (Philemon 16); “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28); and Babylon’s cargo ends with “slaves and souls of men” (Revelation 18:13).
• Stated: a law that permits what it does not approve. “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hardness of heart; but it was not this way from the beginning.” (Matthew 19:8).
• Measured. 1 Timothy 1:10’s “slave traders” is ἀνδραποδισταῖς, ‘man-stealers’, the crime of Exodus 21:16, whose Greek, at 21:17 in Rahlfs’s numbering, reads κλέψῃ τίς τινα τῶν υἱῶν Ισραηλ, ‘steals one of the sons of Israel’; and Revelation 18:13 lists σωμάτων, καὶ ψυχὰς ἀνθρώπων, ‘bodies, and souls of men’, among Babylon’s goods.
• A witness from inside slavery. Frederick Douglass: “between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference”; “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” (Narrative, Appendix, 1845).
• Inference. The texts regulate slavery and do not abolish it in so many words: stated. They keep Israelites from being sold as slaves and let Israel hold foreigners for life (Leviticus 25:39–46): stated. Why a law given by God regulates what it does not forbid, the texts answer once, of divorce: Moses permitted it “because of your hardness of heart”, though “it was not this way from the beginning” (Matthew 19:8). That the slave laws are of that kind is a reading: the verse is said of divorce, and carrying it to slavery is an inference by likeness, to which Job’s word that one Maker formed master and servant in the womb points (Job 31:15). They also make kidnapping a capital crime, whether the kidnapper sells the man or keeps him (Exodus 21:16), shelter the runaway (Deuteronomy 23:15), set master and slave under one Master (Ephesians 6:9), and make them one in Christ (Galatians 3:28; one body, 1 Corinthians 12:13). The Law limits its own kidnapping law: it names the victim “one of his Israelite brothers” (Deuteronomy 24:7), the Greek of Exodus 21:16 reads ‘of the sons of Israel’, and Leviticus 25:44–46 lets Israel buy foreigners for life; the New Testament’s “slave traders” (1 Timothy 1:10) names the trade in men with no such limit. So the pro-slavery reading contradicts the texts wherever it defends the trade in stolen people: follows. Stringfellow rests it elsewhere, on the holding of slaves that the Law let Israel buy and bequeath (Leviticus 25:44–46; Exodus 21:4), and there no text quoted here contradicts him: the New Testament gives masters and slaves their duties without forbidding the holding (Ephesians 6:5–9; 1 Peter 2:18), and sends Onesimus back (Philemon 12) to be received “no longer as a slave” (16). That the texts contradict the pro-slavery reading on the holding of slaves is not shown. That the Law’s permission, like its penalties, bound Israel’s commonwealth and passed with it is a reading (Old covenant and new, 4–5), and so is the abolitionists’ reading, that the texts’ principles, followed through, undo slavery itself.

15. Women.

• The case. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced.” (The Woman’s Bible, 1898).
• Stated: the hard texts. “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12); “Women are to be silent in the churches.” (1 Corinthians 14:34); “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22), with “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (5:25); “he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16), said after the fall, of the fall. Paul reads creation itself as setting an order: “he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” (1 Corinthians 11:7–9). And with its reason, the ground of Stanton’s summary: “For Adam was formed first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression.” (1 Timothy 2:13–14).
• Stated: the other texts. “male and female He created them”, both in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). In the passage of the order: “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.” (1 Corinthians 11:11–12); and husbands and wives are “fellow heirs of the gracious gift of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Sin’s entry is laid on the man: “just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). “Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.” (Judges 4:4). Women supported Jesus’ mission “out of their own means” (Luke 8:1–3), and the first sent to tell of the resurrection was Mary Magdalene: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:17–18). Women prophesied in the church (Acts 2:17–18; 21:9; 1 Corinthians 11:5). Paul commends “our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea”, and greets “Andronicus and Junia”, who “are outstanding among the apostles” (Romans 16:1, 7).
• Measured. Phoebe’s title is διάκονον, the word for ‘servant’ or ‘deacon’ (Romans 16:1); Romans 16:7 names Ἰουνίαν, a woman’s name in the critical text, among those ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις.
• Scholars on two of these texts. Eldon Jay Epp’s publisher: “Because later theologians and scribes could not believe (or wanted to suppress) that Paul had numbered a woman among the earliest churches' apostles, Junia's name was changed in Romans to a masculine form.” (Junia: The First Woman Apostle, 2005). Philip Payne, on 1 Corinthians 14:34–35: “All manuscripts of the Western Text-Type put these two verses after 1 Cor 14:40.” “Virtually all other manuscripts put these two verses after 1 Cor 14:33.” “Such divergent positioning is one of the hallmarks of interpolations.” (2009).
• Inference. Man and woman both bear God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and both are one in Christ and fellow heirs (Galatians 3:28; 1 Peter 3:7): stated. That this makes them equal is a reading, for the word is not in the texts: Paul reads creation as setting an order (1 Corinthians 11:7–9), and in the same passage as binding each to the other (11:11–12). Stanton’s summary rests on 1 Timothy 2:13–14 and Genesis 3, and is half the texts: they also lay sin’s entry on the man (Romans 5:12), and women judge, prophesy, serve and carry the first news of the resurrection. Whether Junia was counted an apostle turns on ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, ‘outstanding among the apostles’ or ‘well known to the apostles’: a reading. The texts also state headship in marriage and limits on teaching in the church (Ephesians 5:22; 1 Timothy 2:12). How the two sets fit, and whether 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 stood in Paul’s first text, are readings, and the churches divide on them.

16. Prophecies that seem to have failed.

• The case. Bertrand Russell: “For one thing, He certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that.” (Why I Am Not a Christian, 1927).
• Stated. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28); “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.” (24:34), four verses after “They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” (24:30; Luke 21:27, 32); “you will not reach all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23); “Yes, I am coming soon.” (Revelation 22:20). But also: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36). The next verse after 16:28 is “After six days Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John”, and “There He was transfigured before them.” (17:1–2). Luke’s form of the discourse names Jerusalem’s fall: “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you will know that her desolation is near.” (Luke 21:20). And the texts expect the objection: “‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ they will ask.” (2 Peter 3:4), answered with patience (3:8–9; Physics, 4).
• Stated: Tyre. “I will raise up many nations against you”; “I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”, who “will set up siege works against you” and “enters your gates”; “They will plunder your wealth”; “You will never be rebuilt”; “You will be sought, but will never be found” (Ezekiel 26:3–21). The book itself records the outcome of the siege: “But he and his army received no wages from Tyre for the labor they expended on it.” and Egypt is given him instead (29:18–20), of which the same chapter says, “it will be uninhabited for forty years” (29:11–13). Isaiah has, “the LORD will restore Tyre” (Isaiah 23:17); and Paul’s ship “landed at Tyre”, where he stayed seven days with the disciples (Acts 21:3–4).
• Inference. The near sayings have readings that the texts themselves place next to them: the transfiguration that follows Matthew 16:28, and the fall of Jerusalem named in Luke 21:20, within that generation; the day of the end is stated to be unknown (Matthew 24:36). The hardest is Matthew 24:34, whose “all these things” follows the coming on the clouds (24:30): that it means the signs before the coming, and Matthew 10:23 a coming in judgment within that generation, are readings, and the objection reads them otherwise. Which reading Jesus meant is a reading. Of Tyre, the book itself records that the plunder of 26:12 did not fall to Nebuchadnezzar, whose army “received no wages from Tyre” (29:18), and the plain sense of “never be found” (26:21) meets the Tyre where Paul landed (Acts 21:3) and the Tyre Isaiah says the LORD will restore (23:17). R2 requires a harmony, and three are offered: that the “many nations” (26:3) come against the city in turn, and the “They” of 26:12 are not Nebuchadnezzar’s army alone; that “never be rebuilt” speaks of the city as Ezekiel addressed it, the island power, and not of every town on its site; and that the words of total ruin are the language of judgment on a power, as Joshua’s are of victories that left survivors (The conquest, 3). Each is a reading, and the texts do not decide among them; read without R2, 26:21 and Acts 21:3 conflict in their plain sense, and 29:18–20 reads as the prophet’s own revision, the sharpest point of the case. That Egypt lay uninhabited for forty years no record quoted here shows: no evidence (Confirmations, Apries). None of these questions changes what step 17’s texts state of the end, which comes “at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23–24). Daniel 11:40–45 is weighed with the book’s date (20).

17. The Gospels against each other.

• The case. Bart Ehrman: “But I do use contradictions to call the Gospel accounts of Jesus into question.” (his blog, read on its podcast, 2023), though contradictions alone, he adds, do not show that a story was made up: “You need other evidence for that.”
• Stated: the differences. The genealogies: “and Jacob the father of Joseph” (Matthew 1:16), but “the son of Joseph, the son of Heli” (Luke 3:23). Judas: “he went away and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5), but “there he fell headlong and burst open in the middle” (Acts 1:18); the priests “used the money to buy the potter’s field” (Matthew 27:7), but “Judas bought a field” (Acts 1:18), each called the Field of Blood (Matthew 27:8; Acts 1:19). At the tomb, “an angel of the Lord” (Matthew 28:2) and “a young man dressed in a white robe” (Mark 16:5), but “two men in radiant apparel” (Luke 24:4) and “two angels in white” (John 20:12). The day: in Mark the Last Supper is “On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed” (Mark 14:12); in John the trial is on “the day of Preparation for the Passover” (John 19:14). After the tomb, in Mark the women “did not say a word to anyone” (Mark 16:8), and in Matthew they “ran to tell His disciples” (Matthew 28:8); Matthew has the eleven go to Galilee (28:7, 10, 16), where Luke has “remain in the city” (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4). And against the texts they cite: David ate the bread “During the high priesthood of Abiathar” (Mark 2:26), where 1 Samuel 21:1 names “Ahimelech the priest”; “Jeremiah the prophet” (Matthew 27:9) is given words closest to Zechariah’s “thirty pieces of silver” thrown “to the potter” (Zechariah 11:12–13); and “Joram the father of Uzziah” (Matthew 1:8) passes over the three kings between them (1 Chronicles 3:11–12), before Matthew counts “fourteen generations” (1:17).
• Stated: the oldest harmonies. On the genealogies, Julius Africanus: “Eli and Jacob were thus uterine brothers. Eli having died childless, Jacob raised up seed to him, begetting Joseph, his own son by nature, but by law the son of Eli. Thus Joseph was the son of both.” (Letter to Aristides, in Eusebius, Church History 1.7). Augustine’s rule for differences of wording: “For thus we learn the salutary lesson, that our aim should be nothing else than to ascertain what is the mind and intention of the person who speaks.” (Harmony of the Gospels 2.12, tr. Salmond).
• Inference. The differences are real and stated. Each has a proposed harmony: a levirate line through Heli (Africanus), a hanging and a fall, a field bought by the priests with his money, an angel named where two were present, two calendars of Passover; women silent on the road who then told the disciples, and appearances both in Jerusalem and in Galilee over “forty days” (Acts 1:3; John 20–21); for Abiathar, ἐπί read as Mark reads it at 12:26, ἐπὶ τοῦ βάτου, ‘about the bush’, or Abiathar as Ahimelech’s son, who “fled to David” (1 Samuel 22:20); for Jeremiah, the prophet who bought a field and went down to a potter (Jeremiah 32:6–9; 18:2–3), joined to Zechariah’s words; and ‘father’ used of a forefather, as ‘son’ is of David and Abraham (Matthew 1:1). Each is a reading. What the Gospels agree on, the death under Pilate, the burial, and the empty tomb found by women, with the appearances in three of them and promised in Mark, “There you will see Him” (Mark 16:7), is shared by all four, though their accounts of it differ in the details above (Confirmations). R2 requires a harmony, and which one holds is a reading; this document states the differences rather than hide them.

18. Who chose the books?

• The case, in its strong form. That the canon records which party won. Publishers Weekly, of Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities (2003), as his site gives it: “The proto-orthodox Christians won out over many other groups, and bequeathed to us the four Gospels, a church hierarchy, a set of practices and beliefs, and doctrines such as the Trinity.”
• Stated: the books’ own claims. Luke writes after “Many have undertaken to compose an account”, from what was “handed down to us by the initial eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:1–3). Peter sets Paul’s letters with “the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16), in a letter doubted in antiquity: Eusebius writes that “his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon”, though “it has been used with the other Scriptures” (Church History 3.3.1), and Jerome that, “on account of its difference from the first in style,” it “is considered by many not to be by him” (On Illustrious Men 1). 1 Timothy 5:18 cites as “the Scripture” both Deuteronomy 25:4 and “The worker is worthy of his wages”, words found in Luke 10:7. And Jude quotes 1 Enoch: “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them” (Jude 14).
• Stated: the early lists. Irenaeus, about 180: “It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are.” (Against Heresies 3.11.8). Athanasius, in 367, lists the New Testament book by book and closes: “These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.” (Festal Letter 39).
• Stated (Athanasius). His list names four Gospels, Acts, seven general letters, fourteen letters of Paul and Revelation. The letter gives no total; the sum, twenty-seven books, is this document’s, and it is the New Testament as printed today.
• Inference. The four Gospels were a settled set by Irenaeus’s time, about 180, and the twenty-seven books are first listed exactly by Athanasius, in 367, in a bishop’s letter, not a council’s ruling; within the canon itself Paul’s letters and a saying found in Luke are already called Scripture (2 Peter 3:16; 1 Timothy 5:18), in two letters whose authors scholars dispute (20), so that they witness to the time of their writing, which is itself disputed. That a council of the fourth century invented the four Gospels is ruled out by Irenaeus’s date: follows. The late date of the first exact list shows that the canon’s edges took longer to settle; no council’s list is quoted here. The strong form is another claim: that the books are those of the party that prevailed is the historians’ account of how the canon was received (the case, above), and which books belong no text of the canon states: open. The churches’ judgment settled it for them. This document does not test that judgment; it takes the canon as its premise (R1), and other writings, Jude’s Enoch among them, as witnesses, so that its conclusions hold of that canon, whoever chose it.

19. Can the manuscripts be trusted?

• The case. Bart Ehrman: “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” (Misquoting Jesus, 2005, as Greg Koukl quotes the 2007 paperback, pp. 7 and 90).
• The three largest additions, as the scholars state them. The end of Mark: “This, the so-called Short Ending, is attested by the two famous fourth-century Greek pandects Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, a variety of early translations, and observations in early Christian writers including Eusebius, Hesychius of Jerusalem and Severus of Antioch.” (H. A. G. Houghton, New Testament Studies 69, 2023), the Short Ending being, in Houghton’s use, the text that stops at Mark 16:8. The woman taken in adultery: “The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the pericope of the adulteress is overwhelming.” (Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, as Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman quote him, 2020). The three witnesses of 1 John 5:7: “The passage is absent from every known Greek manuscript except eight, and these contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate.” “Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.” (Metzger).
• Measured. The critical Greek text used here (SBLGNT) prints Mark 16:8 to ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, ‘for they were afraid’, and then both endings added later, the brief one of a few lines and verses 9–20, each between double brackets, ⟦ ⟧; it lacks John 7:53–8:11; and its 1 John 5:7 reads only ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, ‘For there are three that testify’, without the added words about the Father, the Word and the Spirit. The KJV prints all three, unmarked. No step of the sequence quotes any of the three passages; this document quotes Mark 16:16 and John 8:7–11 only with this note (Salvation, 4; Old covenant and new, 4).
• Inference. The variations are many, as Ehrman says, and the largest are known and named, and the critical text marks or leaves them out; the earlier forms can be read beside the later. No step of the sequence quotes these three passages; two texts the sequence does use, Deuteronomy 32:8 and Jude 5, carry variants, weighed where they stand (step 8; The Masoretic change; Gap 3): measured. That the text as a whole cannot be known is not shown by the count of variations, since the variations are themselves the evidence by which the earlier text is recovered: a reading, which the critical editions put into practice.

20. Who wrote the books, and when?

• The case. A bookseller’s description of Ehrman’s book: “This New York Times bestseller reveals how many books in the Bible were not written by their traditional authors,” (Jesus, Interrupted, 2009). On the Torah: “The view that is persuasive to most of the critical scholars of the Pentateuch is called the Documentary Hypothesis, or the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis, after the names of the 19th-century scholars who put it in its classic form. Briefly stated, the Documentary Hypothesis sees the Torah as having been composed by a series of editors out of four major strands of literary traditions.” (University of Pennsylvania course page), which adds, “Scholars often associate Deuteronomy with the book found by King Josiah in 622 BCE (see 2 Kings 22).” On Daniel, the ancient form of the case, from Porphyry, as Jerome reports: “denying that it was composed by the person to whom it is ascribed in its title, but rather by some individual living in Judaea at the time of the Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes”, and “contending that whatever is foretold concerning Antichrist at the end of the world was actually fulfilled in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes” (Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, prologue, tr. Gleason Archer). And its modern form: “scholars consider that the point where the text shifts from detailed description of known historical events, to apocalyptic symbols indicating God’s victory over the crisis, reflects the present of the author, i.e., in the middle of the crisis under Antiochus in the 160s BCE.” (Ian Young, Gareth Wearne and Evan Caddy, 2026).
• Stated: what the texts claim, and what they leave open. The Torah says that “Moses wrote down this law” (Deuteronomy 31:9), and reports his death and burial, and that “no one to this day knows the location of his grave” (34:5–6), and “Since that time, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses” (34:10). It has Abram pursue “as far as Dan” (Genesis 14:14), the name the Danites gave a city they took, “though the city was formerly named Laish” (Judges 18:29); it lists the kings of Edom “before any king reigned over the Israelites” (Genesis 36:31), where God had told Jacob, “kings shall descend from you” (35:11); and it says, “at that time the Canaanites were in the land” (12:6; 13:7). The book found in Josiah’s temple is “the Book of the Law of the LORD written by Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:14; 2 Kings 22:8). Jesus speaks of Moses as a writer, “he wrote about Me” (John 5:46), and of “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). No Gospel names its author in its text; John’s ends, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who has written them down.” (John 21:24).
• Stated (Papias, as Eusebius quotes him). The earliest names for the Gospels: “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ”, and “Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.” (Church History 3.39.15–16).
• Stated: Daniel. The book dates its visions to Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus (7:1; 9:1; 10:1), and Jesus names “the prophet Daniel” (Matthew 24:15). Its eleventh chapter follows the kings of Persia and Greece (11:2–4) to “a despicable person” (11:21), whose forces “abolish the daily sacrifice and set up the abomination of desolation” (11:31), and then: “He will pitch his royal tents between the sea and the beautiful holy mountain, but he will meet his end with no one to help him.” (11:45). After Belshazzar the kingdom is received by Darius the Mede (5:30–31; 11:1), “son of Xerxes, a Mede by descent” (9:1), and Daniel “prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian” (6:28). The first verse sets a siege of Jerusalem “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim” (1:1), where Jeremiah makes “the fourth year of Jehoiakim” “the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 25:1).
• Measured by others: the oldest copy of Daniel. “Furthermore, this study establishes 4QDanielc (4Q114) and 4QQoheleta (4Q109) to be the first known fragments of a biblical book from the time of their presumed authors.” “We do not know who exactly finished the Book of Daniel but the common assumption is that this author did that during the early 160s BCE.” (University of Groningen, 2025). Of the same scroll, Ian Young, Gareth Wearne and Evan Caddy give the radiocarbon result as “most likely composed between the years 355–285 BCE or 230–160 BCE.” and add, “Significantly, the latter of these ranges seems to line up with the widely held theory that the Book of Daniel was completed sometime in the 160s BCE.” To those of the traditional view who average the range to an earlier date they answer, “this is not how carbon date ranges work: there is an equal probability throughout the date range.” (The Bible and Interpretation, 2026).
• The record, on Daniel. 1 Maccabees dates the desecration: “in the hundred forty and fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar” (1:54); and it has Antiochus turned back at Elymais, “in the country of Persia”, and die “in the hundred forty and ninth year” (6:1–16). Polybius: “he died in the course of his return at Tabae, in Persia” (Histories 31.11, tr. Evelyn Shuckburgh). The Nabonidus Chronicle, of Babylon’s fall: “Cyrus entered Babylon.” “Gubaru, his district officer, appointed the district officers in Babylon.” (iii 18, 20, tr. A. K. Grayson).
• Inference. That the lines on Moses’ death and grave were written after him is strong (Deuteronomy 34:5–10), and with them the name Dan, which the city took in the judges’ time (Genesis 14:14; Judges 18:29): that parts of the Torah were written or updated after Moses is strong. That some were written once Israel had kings is moderate: Genesis 36:31 reads so, and its rival reads the line in view of the promise of kings (35:11). How much of the rest is his is a reading: the texts say he wrote this law (Deuteronomy 31:9), Chronicles calls Josiah’s book his (2 Chronicles 34:14), and Jesus speaks of him as writing; most critical scholars read the Torah as composed from several strands, and Deuteronomy as Josiah’s book (the case, above). The Gospels are unsigned: stated; the earliest names for two of them, Mark and Matthew, come from an early reader, Papias. Of Daniel, within the canon Jesus gives its words to “the prophet Daniel” (Matthew 24:15): stated. On the record, the book was finished in the 160s BC, before Antiochus IV died: strong. Its eleventh chapter follows his reign through the desecration that 1 Maccabees dates (11:31; 1 Maccabees 1:54), then sets his end between the sea and the holy mountain (11:45), where Polybius and 1 Maccabees set it in Persia; and both studies quoted find the oldest copy’s radiocarbon date compatible with that time. The other reading takes the chapter’s end of a king still to come, and its course before that as foretold; it rests on the book’s claim to foretell, which no record can test, and on the record it is the weaker. Two more points meet the record. Darius the Mede receives the kingdom where the chronicle has Cyrus and his officer Gubaru; he is Gubaru on one reply, and Cyrus on another, which reads 6:28 as one reign under two names. Jehoiakim’s third year (Daniel 1:1) is Jeremiah’s fourth (25:1) if the two count a reign’s first year differently, as the texts’ counts differ elsewhere (Confirmations, the Babylonian Chronicle). Each is a reading. Of the letters, which were written by those whose names they bear divides scholars, and 2 Peter was doubted in antiquity (18); this document reads the canon as it stands (R1) and grades authorship, where it matters, as a reading. No step of the sequence rests on who wrote a book or when: Daniel 10’s princes stand in the canon at any date (R1; Joint 1).

21. Isaiah 7:14 and the virgin birth.

• The case, in its oldest form. Trypho, to Justin, about 160: “And Trypho answered, ‘The Scripture has not, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” but, “Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son,” and so on, as you quoted.” “But the whole prophecy refers to Hezekiah, and it is proved that it was fulfilled in him, according to the terms of this prophecy.” (Dialogue with Trypho 67). In its strongest form, the sign is a child of Ahaz’s own day: Rashi, as Rabbi Jack Abramowitz reports him, takes the young woman to be the prophet’s own wife (OU Torah).
• Stated. “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14, BSB), a sign to King Ahaz: “For before the boy knows enough to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.” (7:16). Matthew: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet” (Matthew 1:22–23). The birth itself is told apart from the word: “How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34); “But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a Son.” (Matthew 1:25). On the same clock as 7:16, the next chapter tells of a son born to the prophet: “she conceived and gave birth to a son” (8:3), and “before the boy knows how to cry ‘Father’ or ‘Mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.” (8:4); the land is “your entire land, O Immanuel!” (8:8); and the prophet says, “Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me as signs and symbols in Israel” (8:18). Ahaz “was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years” (2 Kings 16:2), and Hezekiah his son was “twenty-five years old when he became king” (18:2).
• Stated: David’s line. The promise is of “your descendant after you, who will come from your own body” (2 Samuel 7:12), and Paul calls the Son “a descendant of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3). Matthew’s line runs to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus” (Matthew 1:16), whom the angel calls “Joseph, son of David” (1:20); in Luke, Jesus “was regarded as the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:23), and is promised “the throne of His father David” (1:32). Matthew’s line passes through Jeconiah (Matthew 1:11–12), of whom Jeremiah says, “None of his descendants will prosper to sit on the throne of David or to rule again in Judah.” (Jeremiah 22:30); the LORD would pull him off even if he “were a signet ring on My right hand” (22:24), and to Jeconiah’s grandson Zerubbabel he says, “I will make you like My signet ring” (Haggai 2:23; Matthew 1:12).
• Measured. The Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 is hā-ʿalmâ hārâ, ‘the young woman, with child’. hārâ is an adjective; in the phrase it forms with yālad, ‘give birth’, it is a woman already pregnant in three of its five other verses (Genesis 16:11; 1 Samuel 4:19; Jeremiah 31:8) and a barren wife who will conceive in two (Judges 13:5, 7), so the passage sets its time. ʿalmâ stands in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:25; Proverbs 30:19; Song of Songs 1:3; 6:8; Isaiah 7:14); the word for a virgin, bĕtûlâ, stands in fifty. The Greek translation made before Christ renders ʿalmâ by παρθένος twice, ἡ παρθένος at Isaiah 7:14 and at Genesis 24:43, where the ʿalmâ is Rebekah, whom the BSB calls “a maiden” and the story has already called a virgin (24:16); four times it has νεᾶνις, ‘young woman’, and once νεότης, ‘youth’. Its παρθένος stands in 51 verses of books with a Hebrew text and renders bĕtûlâ, or its noun, in 45, in Isaiah in all four besides 7:14; but it also names Dinah, “the young girl” (naʿărā), after Shechem “lay with her by force” (Genesis 34:2–3). Matthew quotes the Greek: Ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος (Matthew 1:23).
• Inference. The Hebrew word means a young woman, of an age to marry; it does not of itself say virgin, nor hārâ whether she is already with child: measured. The sign’s first horizon is Ahaz’s own day (7:16), and on the same clock a son is born to the prophet, whose children are “signs” (8:3–4, 18): that the sign had a child of that day follows from 7:16, and which child is a reading. Hezekiah, the oldest form’s child, is the weaker: by the ages the texts give he was nine when Ahaz began to reign (2 Kings 16:2; 18:2), ages that would make Ahaz a father at eleven, a difficulty of their own (28). For 7:14 the Greek translator chose the word he gives bĕtûlâ everywhere else in Isaiah; that he read the ʿalmâ as a virgin is moderate, for the same Greek word names Dinah after Shechem had lain with her (Genesis 34:3), and elsewhere ʿalmâ is ‘young woman’ in the Greek. Matthew names Mary’s son as the sign’s fulfillment (Matthew 1:22–23), and within this study’s scope a later book’s naming counts as stated; that the sign has both, a child of Ahaz’s day and Mary’s son, is R2’s harmony of 7:16 with Matthew: a reading. The virgin birth rests on the narratives of Matthew and Luke, which state it, not on the Hebrew word alone: stated. Of David’s line the plain senses differ: the promise is of David’s own body, and both lines run through Joseph, whom the narratives deny is the father. R2 requires a harmony: that Jesus is David’s heir by law, as the son Joseph took and named (Matthew 1:20–25), and David’s son by the flesh through Mary, whose line no text states, though one reading takes Luke’s list as hers; and that the word against Jeconiah’s descendants (Jeremiah 22:30) does not reach a son not of his body, or is turned back in Zerubbabel (Haggai 2:23). Each is a reading.

22. The hard stories.

• The case. Thomas Paine, of the Old Testament: “it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.” “It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind” (The Age of Reason, Part I, 1794).
• Abraham and Isaac. “Take your son,” God said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love” (Genesis 22:2); then, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him” (22:12). Hebrews reads it so: “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and in a sense, he did receive Isaac back from death.” (Hebrews 11:19). The verb is ‘tested’ (Wine, plants and desire, 7), and the Law later forbids the sacrifice of children outright (Leviticus 18:21; The conquest, 2).
• Three texts set against that law. “You are to give Me the firstborn of your sons.” (Exodus 22:29), where the Law adds, “You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons.” (34:20). “I also gave them over to statutes that were not good”, and “the sacrifice of every firstborn in the fire” (Ezekiel 20:25–26). Mesha “offered him as a burnt offering on the city wall. And there was great fury against the Israelites” (2 Kings 3:27). And of the fires of Topheth the LORD says, “something I never commanded, nor did it even enter My mind” (Jeremiah 7:31).
• The Flood. “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5); “the earth is full of violence” (6:13); and “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Peter 3:20).
• Egypt’s firstborn. Before the plague, the warning: “Israel is My firstborn son”, “But since you have refused to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son!” (Exodus 4:22–23), to the throne that had ordered, “Every son born to the Hebrews you must throw into the Nile” (1:22), though by then “the king of Egypt died” (2:23). The sharpest lines stand beside it: Pharaoh “hardened his heart” (8:15), and then “the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12); and the death reached “the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon” (12:29).
• Midian. “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites.” (Numbers 31:2). Of the captives Moses says, “these women caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to turn unfaithfully against the LORD at Peor”, and “So now, kill all the boys, as well as every woman who has had relations with a man, but spare for yourselves every girl who has never had relations with a man.” (31:16–18).
• Jephthah’s daughter. He vowed that “whatever comes out the door of my house to greet me on my triumphant return from the Ammonites will belong to the LORD, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” (Judges 11:31), and “he did to her as he had vowed” (11:39). Hebrews names him among those “who through faith conquered kingdoms” (Hebrews 11:32–33).
• Ananias and Sapphira. “Did it not belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” “You have not lied to men, but to God!” (Acts 5:4): the sin was the lie to God, not the keeping of the money.
• Elisha and the bears. “a group of boys came out of the city and jeered at him”, and “two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys” (2 Kings 2:23–24). Measured: the Hebrew is nĕʿārîm qĕṭannîm, ‘young lads’, and then yĕlādîm. Taken singly, naʿar is also used of Joseph at seventeen (Genesis 37:2), and yeled of the young men Rehoboam took as counselors (1 Kings 12:8); but the phrase itself, naʿar with qāṭān, stands in six verses, and of the other five, four are small children, as “a small boy” (1 Samuel 20:35; 1 Kings 11:17; 2 Kings 5:14; Isaiah 11:6), and the fifth is Solomon, a king, of himself: “I am only a little child” (1 Kings 3:7).
• Job’s children. “Everything he has is in your hands”, the LORD says to Satan (Job 1:12), and a wind brings down the house on them: “they are dead” (1:19).
• Inference. Each story gives its own frame: a test stopped before the knife (Genesis 22:12), a judgment after long patience on a world “full of violence” (1 Peter 3:20), a warning to the throne that had drowned Israel’s sons (Exodus 1:22; 4:23), vengeance on Midian for Peor (Numbers 31:2, 16), a man’s own vow (Judges 11:31), a test of Job (Job 1:12), a lie told to God (Acts 5:4), and boys, small by the phrase’s other uses, jeering at God’s prophet (2 Kings 2:23). The frames are stated. For some within them the texts give no reason of their own, and these remain the sharpest part of the charge: the hardening of a heart first hardened by its owner (Exodus 8:15; 9:12), the dungeon’s firstborn (12:29), the boys of Midian (Numbers 31:17), Jephthah’s daughter, whose father Hebrews names for a faith that “conquered kingdoms” (11:32–33), Job’s children, and the forty-two at Bethel. Of the three texts set against the Law’s ban, Exodus 22:29’s firstborn are redeemed (34:20): reconciled in the texts. Ezekiel 20:25–26’s “gave them over” is read with Jeremiah 7:31, “something I never commanded”, as a judgment that left Israel to the sacrifices it chose (Ezekiel 20:31), and 2 Kings 3:27 names no one as the source of the fury: each a reading. Whether the frames answer Paine’s charge is where readers divide: a reading. The problem of evil is weighed under God’s attributes and Good, evil and free will.

23. Why does God not show himself plainly?

• The case. J. L. Schellenberg’s argument, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states it: “(1) There are people who are capable of relating personally to God but who, through no fault of their own, fail to believe.” “(2) If there is a personal God who is unsurpassably great, then there are no such people.” “(3) So, there is no such God (from 1 and 2).” (Daniel Howard-Snyder and Adam Green, “Hiddenness of God”, 2022). Those it has in view, the entry says, include “honest seekers of the truth who remain agnostics and atheists”, “members of cultures that lack the idea of a personal God altogether”, “hunter-gatherers prior to recorded history”, and “those who have lost their theistic faith, and who would like nothing more than to regain it”.
• Stated. “Truly You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (Isaiah 45:15). “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13). “God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:27). “For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” (Romans 1:19), of those “who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (1:18). “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29); “anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). And of signs: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:31). Sight persuades at times: “When all the people saw this, they fell facedown and said, ‘The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!’” (1 Kings 18:39); Thomas, shown the wounds, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:27–28). At times it does not: “Although Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still did not believe in Him.” (John 12:37). Of cities that were not given such signs: “if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago”, and “it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you” (Matthew 11:21–22). Belief alone is not the trust sought: “Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19). And the unbelief that John 3:18 condemns has its cause stated: “men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).
• Inference. The texts deny the argument’s second premise: their God hides for a purpose, a seeking that ends in finding (Jeremiah 29:13; Acts 17:27) and a trust that is blessed (John 20:29), a trust that belief alone does not give (James 2:19). Sight persuades at times and at times does not (1 Kings 18:39; John 20:28; 12:37), so plain sight does not of itself persuade (Luke 16:31): stated, both ways. They also deny the first premise: what may be known of God is “plain” (Romans 1:19–20), and the unbelief condemned is a love of darkness (John 3:18–19). Yet they allow ignorance, which “God overlooked” (Acts 17:30), and say that Tyre and Sidon lacked the signs that would have turned them and will be judged the more lightly (Matthew 11:21–22): a judgment by what each was given. Whether any of those the argument names is without fault, no one can measure, and the texts give the matter to the Judge (Salvation, 5). That the texts give hiddenness a purpose is stated; whether that purpose requires that some be left without what would persuade them is open. The hiding and seeking itself is weighed under The One and the other, 3.

24. Why the Bible, and not the Quran or the Vedas?

• The question, from the other scriptures themselves. The Quran says of Jesus: “They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them” (4:157, tr. Pickthall, 1930); and it says the Gospel was given “confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah” (5:46). The Rig Veda asks of creation: “Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?” and answers, “he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.” (10.129.6–7, tr. Ralph Griffith).
• Stated. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1); “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6); “Salvation exists in no one else” (Acts 4:12).
• The record, where it can be tested. Of the crucifixion, Paul writes of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2), and the Roman historian Tacitus that Christus “suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus” (Annals 15.44; Confirmations). The Quran’s denial (4:157) came some six centuries after the event (The Quran on Jesus).
• Inference. This document does not prove the Bible above every other scripture; its premise is the canon (R1), and other writings are witnesses. Where a rival scripture’s claim can be set beside the record, the record answers only what it can test. The crucifixion was reported from the first, by Paul and by Tacitus; the Quran allows as much, for it says “it appeared so unto them”, and that it only appeared so is a claim no record can test: the record is not evidence either way. The hymn of the Rig Veda leaves the origin of creation unknown, and does not say whether its first origin formed it; the texts state a Creator (Genesis 1:1), and the two do not meet at any point the record can test. Which revelation is true is not settled by any test run here; this document takes the canon as its premise, and says so. The Quran’s other claims about Jesus are set against the texts in The Quran on Jesus.

25. Sexual ethics, including homosexuality.

• Stated: the pattern. “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’” “and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4–5). “Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).
• Stated: the prohibitions. “You must not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). “Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another.” (Romans 1:26–27). In one list with thieves, the greedy, drunkards and swindlers, “nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts”, and then, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9–11).
• Measured. The Greek behind 1 Corinthians 6:9 is μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται. ἀρσενοκοίτης stands only there and in 1 Timothy 1:10 (ἀρσενοκοίταις). It joins ἄρσην, ‘male’, and κοίτη, ‘bed’, the two words that stand side by side in the Greek of Leviticus 20:13: μετὰ ἄρσενος κοίτην γυναικός, ‘with a male, the bed of a woman’.
• The two readings, in their authors’ words. David Gushee reports Dale Martin’s argument that in its few uses outside the New Testament the word concerns economic exploitation, and writes of renderings such as ‘sexual exploiters’: “Such translations are plausible, even if not the majority scholarly reconstruction at this time.” (Baptist News Global, 2014). Robert Gagnon’s publisher: “He demonstrates why attempts to classify the Bible’s rejection of same-sex intercourse as irrelevant for our contemporary context fail to do justice to the biblical texts and to current scientific data.” (The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 2002).
• Inference. The texts give one pattern for sexual union, man and woman in marriage (Matthew 19:4–6), and they prohibit same-sex intercourse in both Testaments (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26–27): stated. That ἀρσενοκοῖται means only exploitative sex is the weaker reading: the word matches the Greek of Leviticus 20:13, and Gushee grants that it is “not the majority scholarly reconstruction at this time”. That it names same-sex intercourse as such is moderate. The same lists set every sexual sin beside greed, drunkenness and slander, and end with washing for all who turn (1 Corinthians 6:9–11): stated. Why these commands still bind when the food laws do not is answered under Old covenant and new, 6.

26. Was Jesus copied from other gods?

• The case. Kersey Graves, 1875: “For these facts demonstrate beyond all cavil and criticism, and with a logical force which can leave not the vestige of a doubt upon any unbiased mind, that all its doctrines are an outgrowth from older heathen systems.” (The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors).
• The case, in its strongest form. Not copying, but a known kind of birth. Ehrman: “By far the more common view was that a divine being comes into the world – not having existed prior to birth – because a god has had sex with a human, and the offspring then is in some sense divine.” (2014). Plutarch, of Alexander’s birth: Philip “espied the god, in the form of a serpent, sharing the couch of his wife” (Alexander 3.1, tr. Bernadotte Perrin). Suetonius, of Augustus’s mother asleep in Apollo’s temple: “a serpent immediately crept to her, and soon after withdrew”; she “purified herself, as usual after the embraces of her husband”, and Augustus “was thought to be the son of Apollo” (Augustus 94.4, tr. Alexander Thomson).
• The scholars. Bart Ehrman, no believer: “Virtually everything Graves says is wrong.” (his blog, 2012); and of virgin births, “In my previous post I pointed out that there do not appear to be any instances in the other religions of antiquity of a virgin birth – where a woman gives birth without having sex.” (2014). Jonathan Z. Smith: “The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts.” (Encyclopedia of Religion, 1987). Tryggve Mettinger, who holds against Smith that the ancient Near East did know gods who die and rise, concludes that there is “no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct”, one “drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world” (The Riddle of Resurrection, 2001, as William Lane Craig quotes p. 221). Of Mithras’s birth, Roger Beck: “He is shown rising upright from a rock, not as a baby but in the prime of youth, with extended arms holding torch and sword. He has, it seems, no father.” (Encyclopaedia Iranica). Of Tom Harpur’s claim, in The Pagan Christ (2004), that Horus and Jesus share remarkable similarities, Joshua J. Mark writes: “This claim, which is quite obviously false to anyone who knows the stories of the two figures, has become the best known of the book.” Mark denies that “Horus was the prototype for the risen Christ”, and holds that Horus “influenced Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child” (World History Encyclopedia, 2016).
• Stated. “For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16); the texts set the story in a named time and place, under Pontius Pilate (Luke 3:1; Confirmations). Of the conception: “before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18); “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1:35).
• Measured. 2 Peter 1:16’s “cleverly devised fables” is σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις: the letter denies the very charge, in the word μῦθος.
• Inference. That the Gospels were copied from these gods, in Graves’s form, is rejected by the scholars quoted, skeptics among them: strong. Mithras is shown born from a rock as a youth, with, it seems, no father; the scholars quoted find no pagan virgin birth; and dying and rising gods are either a misnomer (Smith) or no source for the Gospels’ resurrection (Mettinger). The strongest form is narrower: that the birth narratives take up a known kind, the great man fathered by a god. They share its outline, a woman, a divine father and a son called divine; they differ at its center, the union, which every story quoted here tells and neither Gospel tells, for the child is conceived “before they came together” and by the Spirit who “will come upon you” (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:35). That the Gospels tell a god’s union with a woman is not supported; that they drew on the outline of that kind is a reading, and Matthew names his own source, Isaiah 7:14 (Matthew 1:22–23). That Horus shaped Christian pictures of the mother and child, as Mark holds, is a narrower claim, about the church’s later art rather than the Gospels’ sources: a reading.

27. A jealous God.

• The case. Richard Dawkins opens his charge sheet with it: the God of the Old Testament is “jealous and proud of it” (The God Delusion, 2006, chapter 2).
• Stated. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,” “but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:3–6). “For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” (34:14). In the Song of step 8: “They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods”, and “They sacrificed to demons, not to God” (Deuteronomy 32:16–17); and “a jealous God” closes the passage of the host apportioned to the nations (4:19–24). The covenant is a marriage: “For your husband is your Maker” (Isaiah 54:5); “So I will betroth you to Me forever” (Hosea 2:19). Paul: “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I promised you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:2); and at the table of demons, “Are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy?” (1 Corinthians 10:22). In Ezekiel the husband’s jealousy is carried out on the wife who went after other gods: “I will bring upon you the wrath of your bloodshed and jealousy”; “They will bring a mob against you, who will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords”, until “My jealousy will turn away from you” (Ezekiel 16:38–42); and “I will set My jealous rage against you” (23:25). Its charge includes “the blood of your children which you gave to them” (16:36), and its end is “an everlasting covenant” (16:60). The same jealousy is for his people: “I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion” (Zechariah 1:14). Yet “jealousy” is among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:20), and “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:16). Of the fathers’ iniquity: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” (Deuteronomy 24:16); “A son will not bear the iniquity of his father” (Ezekiel 18:20). Yet “He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18), with no “of those who hate Me”. To David: “the son born to you will surely die”, and “the LORD struck the child” (2 Samuel 12:14–15). For “the blood shed by Saul and his family”, seven of his descendants are hanged “before the LORD” (2 Samuel 21:1–9). Achan’s “sons and daughters” are stoned with him (Joshua 7:24–25); and Amalek’s “children and infants” for an ambush in their fathers’ day (1 Samuel 15:2–3; The conquest).
• Measured. The adjective qannāʾ, ‘jealous’, stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, twice in one of them (Exodus 20:5; 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24; 5:9; 6:15), and its form qannôʾ in two (Joshua 24:19; Nahum 1:2): seven verses, each said of God. In six the passage sets it against other gods; in Nahum 1:2, against his foes. The root is wider. Its noun qinʾâ, in 41 verses, is the “envy” that rots the bones (Proverbs 14:30), a husband’s “feeling of jealousy” (Numbers 5:14), love’s “jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol” (Song of Songs 8:6), and in three verses of Ezekiel God’s jealousy as a husband, carried out in judgment (16:38, 42; 23:25); its verb is Phinehas “zealous for My sake” (Numbers 25:11), and the Philistines who “envied him” for his flocks and herds (Genesis 26:14). In the New Testament one noun, ζῆλος, in sixteen verses, carries both senses: the “jealousy” of Galatians 5:20, and Paul’s θεοῦ ζήλῳ, ‘a jealousy of God’, in 2 Corinthians 11:2.
• Inference. Read by its own passages (R4), the LORD’s jealousy is not envy, the wish for what belongs to another. In every verse that calls him jealous, what he guards is his own: his people’s worship against other gods, or, in Nahum 1:2, his cause against his foes, as a husband guards his marriage (Isaiah 54:5; Ezekiel 16:38; 2 Corinthians 11:2). The same root is envy where its passage gives it another’s goods for its object, as when the Philistines “envied him” (Genesis 26:14), and the Greek noun is the jealousy of rivals (Acts 13:45): one word, two senses, and the passage decides. Strong. The claim is enforced: in Ezekiel’s figure her lovers strip, stone and cut down the wife who went after other gods and gave them her children (16:36–42; 23:25), until the jealousy turns away and an everlasting covenant is made (16:42, 60); and the same jealousy is for Jerusalem, against the nations at ease (Zechariah 1:14–15): stated. Whether a claim so enforced is good, the moral heart of Dawkins’s charge, is where readers divide: a reading. Of the fathers’ iniquity the plain senses differ. The Law forbids putting a child to death for a father’s sin (Deuteronomy 24:16), as Amaziah applies it (2 Kings 14:5–6), and Ezekiel says a son will not bear it (18:20); yet Exodus 34:7 visits it on the generations without Exodus 20:5’s limit, and the narratives lay a father’s sin on David’s child, on Saul’s descendants, on Achan’s children and on Amalek’s. R2 requires a harmony: that Exodus 20:5’s generations are those who keep their fathers’ hatred, as its “those who love Me” are those who keep his commands (20:6); that the Law binds Israel’s courts; and that Ezekiel speaks of each one’s own standing before God, where David’s child is not condemned: “I will go to him” (2 Samuel 12:23). A reading, and the deaths of David’s child, Achan’s children and Amalek’s remain its sharpest points. For the sequence, this jealousy is the claim of step 8’s portion against the gods of the nations (Deuteronomy 4:19–24; 32:16–17), and Paul turns 32:21’s “I will make them jealous” into the plan by which the nations come in and Israel is drawn back (Romans 10:19; 11:11, 14; Israel). Follows from the texts quoted.

28. Numbers that differ between parallel accounts.

• The case. A number has one plain sense, and where two books tell one event R2 forbids reading them against each other; yet the canon’s parallel accounts give different numbers for the same things.
• Stated. David “killed seven hundred charioteers” (2 Samuel 10:18), and “seven thousand of their charioteers” (1 Chronicles 19:18). Joab’s count: “In Israel there were 800,000 men of valor who drew the sword, and in Judah there were 500,000.” (2 Samuel 24:9), and “In all Israel there were 1,100,000 men who drew the sword, including 470,000 in Judah.” (1 Chronicles 21:5), to which Chronicles adds, “But Joab did not include Levi and Benjamin in the count” (21:6). The chief of David’s mighty men struck “eight hundred men” (2 Samuel 23:8), or “three hundred men” (1 Chronicles 11:11). The sea held “two thousand baths” (1 Kings 7:26), or “three thousand baths” (2 Chronicles 4:5); Solomon’s chief officers were 550 or 250 (1 Kings 9:23; 2 Chronicles 8:10), and his gold from Ophir 420 talents or 450 (1 Kings 9:28; 2 Chronicles 8:18). At Peor “those who died in the plague numbered 24,000” (Numbers 25:9), and Paul writes, “in one day twenty-three thousand of them died” (1 Corinthians 10:8). Ezra and Nehemiah give one list of the returning exiles, each ending “The whole assembly numbered 42,360,” (Ezra 2:64; Nehemiah 7:66), with the singers 200 and 245 (Ezra 2:65; Nehemiah 7:67). Within one account, Ahaz reigned sixteen years from the age of twenty, and Hezekiah his son succeeded him at twenty-five (2 Kings 16:2; 18:2); and the census counts 603,550 men of twenty and over (Numbers 1:45–46) and 22,273 firstborn males (3:43).
• Measured. The Hebrew gives the BSB’s numbers in each pair, with one word changed: at 2 Samuel 10:18 its forty thousand are pārāšîm, ‘horsemen’, where the BSB prints “foot soldiers”, the ʾîš raglî of 1 Chronicles 19:18. At two more points the BSB prints a parallel account’s number, not the Hebrew’s. Ahaziah “was twenty-two years old” at 2 Chronicles 22:2, where the Hebrew has forty-two and 2 Kings 8:26 twenty-two; his father was “thirty-two years old when he became king” and reigned eight years (21:20), so that a son of forty-two would be older than his father. Jehoiachin “was eighteen years old” at 36:9, where the Hebrew has eight, and 2 Kings 24:8 and the Greek eighteen. Kings and Chronicles divide one total of overseers, 3,300 and 550 in Kings, 3,600 and 250 in Chronicles: 3,850 in each (1 Kings 5:16; 9:23; 2 Chronicles 2:2; 8:10). The two lists of exiles, summed from the Hebrew and from the BSB alike, come to 29,818 in Ezra 2:3–60 and 31,089 in Nehemiah 7:8–62, short of their stated whole by 12,542 and 11,271; and of the 33 entries they give under one name, 16 differ in number. The census gives about 27 men for each firstborn son.
• Inference. The numbers differ, and the texts state them: stated. R2 requires a harmony, and the harmonies are of three kinds. Some pairs count different things: Chronicles leaves Levi and Benjamin out of Joab’s count (1 Chronicles 21:6), and Paul counts those who fell “in one day”, where Numbers counts the plague; the overseers are one total divided two ways: reconciled in the texts for the overseers, and for the others a reading. Some are a copyist’s slip in a numeral, as the BSB itself has it at 2 Chronicles 22:2 and 36:9, where a parallel account gives the number, and at 22:2 the father’s age as well: a reading at the other pairs. And both lists of exiles give a whole larger than the sum of their entries, so that the whole counts people the entries do not name: a reading, for no text says who they were. Within one account, a co-regency would ease Ahaz’s fathering a son at eleven, and ʾelep read as a clan or a unit rather than a thousand would ease the census’s 27 men to a firstborn: readings. Which harmony holds at each point is a reading, and it is R2, not a text, that makes each of them a harmony rather than a contradiction. That the canon’s numbers stand the same in every copy is not shown: at three points the BSB itself prints a reading that is not the Hebrew’s. No step of the sequence rests on any of these numbers.

29. Deuteronomy 22:28–29: a law of marriage after rape?

• The question. Why does the Law make a girl who was seized marry the man who seized her?
• Stated: the law, and the cases before it. Of a betrothed woman: “But if the man encounters a betrothed woman in the open country, and he overpowers her and lies with her, only the man who has done this must die.” “Do nothing to the young woman, because she has committed no sin worthy of death. This case is just like one in which a man attacks his neighbor and murders him.” “When he found her in the field, the betrothed woman cried out, but there was no one to save her.” (Deuteronomy 22:25–27); in the city, where “she did not cry out”, both die (22:23–24). Then: “If a man encounters a virgin who is not pledged in marriage, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered,” “then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her. He must not divorce her as long as he lives.” (22:28–29). In Exodus: “If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged in marriage and sleeps with her, he must pay the full dowry for her to be his wife.” “If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, the man still must pay an amount comparable to the bridal price of a virgin.” (Exodus 22:16–17).
• Stated: the woman’s side, in a story. Tamar to Amnon, before he forces her: “Please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” (2 Samuel 13:13); after, when he sends her away: “sending me away is worse than this great wrong you have already done to me!” (13:16).
• Measured. At 22:25 the verb is ḥāzaq with bĕ, ‘take hold of’. In its 40 verses it takes hold of horns, hems and hands as well as people, Amnon’s hold on Tamar (2 Samuel 13:11) and the seductress’s on a young man, “She seizes him and kisses him” (Proverbs 7:13); the force of 22:25 is in the case the law sets, “in the open country”, where she “cried out” (22:27). At 22:28 it is tāpaś, ‘seize’. Of its 60 verses, 28 are a person seized, captured or arrested, as Elijah’s men “seized” the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40) and Potiphar’s wife “grabbed” Joseph (Genesis 39:12); one is a wife who “was not caught in the act” of an adultery she chose (Numbers 5:13, the passive, nitpāśâ); the rest are cities taken, things taken hold of, three figures, and those who handle a harp, oars or the Law (Genesis 4:21; Ezekiel 27:29; Jeremiah 2:8). The case of 22:28 sets no place and no cry, and its “they are discovered” is a plural, wĕnimṣāʾû, where 22:22 has “a man is found”, yimmāṣēʾ. Its “violated” (22:29) is ʿinnâ, the verb of Shechem with Dinah (Genesis 34:2) and of Amnon with Tamar (2 Samuel 13:14), and also of 22:24, where the woman in the city dies with the man. Exodus 22:16’s “seduces” is pātâ.
• Background: the scholars divide. Sandra Richter reads the law as seduction: its verbs “do not communicate force”, and “this law is designed not to punish the man for a violent capital crime, but to protect the young woman from the economic and legal insecurities that this irresponsible man has introduced” (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 64, 2021, p. 67). Eve Levavi Feinstein reads it as rape: “while this law clearly deals with rape, the justification for prohibiting divorce is not that the girl failed to consent but that her virginity has been taken”, and the father’s refusal of Exodus 22:17, “allowing the girl’s father to refuse the match would, if anything, be more appropriate for a case of rape than seduction” (TheTorah.com, 2013). The division is old: Paul Heger’s study of it is titled “The Seducer and the Rapist: Divergent Qumranic and Rabbinic Interpretations of Deut 22:28–29” (Journal of Ancient Judaism 6, 2015), and its abstract has the Temple Scroll apply Deuteronomy’s law to the seducer. They are background, not premises; the grades below rest on the texts.
• Inference. The law binds the man who seized her to pay her father, to marry her and never to divorce her: stated. It names no consent of hers and no refusal, and the silver goes to her father: stated, and not to be softened. That the girl of 22:28 was forced is moderate: in 27 of the 28 other verses where it is said of a person, tāpaś seizes him against his will, and its one other use in a sexual case, Numbers 5:13, is the passive, of a wife not caught in the act, not the active ‘he seizes her’ of 22:28; the rival takes the change of verb from 22:25, the case’s silence on a cry, its plural “they are discovered” and Numbers 5:13 as marks of a girl who consented, as in Exodus 22:16. So that the law makes a girl whom a man forced marry him is moderate, and that Exodus 22:17’s refusal stands here too, which Deuteronomy does not say, is a reading. What the texts show of her side is Tamar’s: to be sent away was the worse wrong (2 Samuel 13:16), and this law binds the man to her for life (22:29); that it was given to protect her in that world is a reading of its purpose, which no text states. After Christ, Israel’s civil law does not bind those in Christ (Old covenant and new, 4): a reading. Whether this answers the charge is where readers divide: a reading.

In one sentence. The skeptics’ hardest questions are real, and each is set against the texts and graded: slavery regulated and not abolished, its defenders contradicted on the trade in stolen people (follows) and not shown to be on the holding of slaves, and the reason for the Law’s permission a reading; man and woman both in God’s image and one in Christ, and their equality a reading; the near prophecies, Tyre, the Gospels’ differences, David’s line and the numbers of parallel accounts stated, with the harmonies R2 requires, readings save one the texts reconcile; the four Gospels settled by about 180, the full list first given in 367, and which books belong open; the manuscripts’ largest additions known and marked or left out; parts of the Torah written or updated after Moses (strong), some under the kings (moderate), and Daniel finished in the 160s BC on the record (strong), the rest of authorship readings; the virgin birth resting on the narratives, Isaiah’s sign first a child of Ahaz’s day (follows), and the Greek translator reading the young woman as a virgin (moderate); the hard stories in frames the texts state, with their sharpest points kept; hiddenness given a purpose, and whether it requires that some be left without what would persuade them open; the crucifixion reported from the first and the Quran’s ‘it appeared so’ beyond any record’s test; the sexual commands restated; the copycat claim in Graves’s form rejected by the scholars quoted, skeptics among them (strong), and that the Gospels tell a god’s union with a woman not supported; a jealous God a husband’s claim, not envy (strong), enforced in judgment, whether that is good a reading, and the fathers’ iniquity a conflict of plain senses that R2’s harmony, a reading, resolves; Deuteronomy 22:28–29 a law that makes a girl the wife of the man who seized her, the seizing a forcing (moderate), and the law not binding after Christ (a reading); where plain senses conflict, it is R2, not a text, that makes the harmony; and none of them breaks a step of the sequence, for the steps claim what the texts state, not when they were written or that they are true.

The story’s end is stated, and its beginning is graded. Its spine:

1. The LORD alone is God, everywhere present, almighty, all-knowing and good, and the host of heaven is his creation (steps 1–2).
2. He pairs the nations with heavenly powers, keeps Israel as his own portion, and is not one of those powers (step 8; Joint 1’s pairing, strong; Joint 4, strong in the canon).
3. The gods are judged, and God is summoned to judge the earth, for all the nations are his inheritance (step 11).
4. The nations are promised to the Son (step 12), whom the New Testament names as Jesus, enthroned “far above all rule and authority” (step 15).
5. The powers are disarmed and the accuser is thrown down (step 15), until Christ “has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power” and hands the kingdom to the Father (step 17).
6. At the end God dwells with his people: “By its light the nations will walk”, and the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations” (step 17; Heaven).

Where it rests on inference. The end needs no inferred link, once the canon names the Son of Psalm 2 as Jesus (Acts 13:33). The beginning rests on Joint 1, Deuteronomy’s allotment, in three parts: the text of 32:8, “sons of God”, strong for heavenly beings; the pairing, strong, on two routes, 32:9’s contrast and 4:19’s host; and the rule, moderate, on Daniel’s princes with Isaiah 24:21, against the live rival that heavenly princes are shown only for the peoples of Israel’s story. The pairing’s place after Babel in the story’s order, which is no date, rests on step 7’s link of 32:8 to Genesis 10–11: moderate, on the one support that tells the two apart, the verb prd with the nations. The allotment covers the nations the texts name; the Flood’s reach decides who those nations were in history, not that link. A conclusion that needs several such links is weaker than each, so the beginning taken whole, paired, ruled and set after Babel, is a reading (How to read the marks). Joint 4, that the LORD is not one of the sons, is strong in the canon on four routes, two through step 2’s identity of the company, one through Psalm 83:18 and one through the Song’s own 32:39, and a reading for 32:8–9 read alone; Job 42:2 supports it on a premise of its own, and Psalm 97:9 agrees with it. Joint 2, Psalm 82’s gods as the sons of God, is a reading, and Joint 3, that the New Testament wrote of the rulers with 32:8 in view, is moderate; the conclusion needs neither. That the powers over the nations are under the Son and at the end destroyed follows on Joint 1 from “all rule and authority” (Ephesians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 15:24), and is as strong as Joint 1: moderate. That they are disarmed is moderate, on Joint 3; that they are judged, moderate on Isaiah 24:21 and a reading on Joint 2; and that they failed by their own fault, and not by weakness, moderate, on Joint 3 (step 15). The solver checks which conclusions need which links, and derives Joint 4 (The sequence as a conditional proof).

The gaps. Gap 1 is a permanent absence: that Paul and Hebrews knew the verse with heavenly beings in it is strong, and that they wrote with it in view is moderate (Joint 3). Gap 3 is answered in the canon: the Most High is not a god above the LORD, the canon names him the Father of the Son, and the Son, who is no son among many, is given the LORD’s name, each strong; that the Son bears the name as the one God whom the Father and he both are is a reading, and so is which person each divine name denotes at 32:8–9. Gap 2, the comparison with Ugarit, stays open and touches no step. The Masoretic change at 32:8 is deliberate (strong); that it hid the council is ruled out, for the Masoretic Text keeps the council elsewhere; whether it corrected or concealed that one reading is a reading, and an intent to deceive is not shown; an anti-Christian motive has no evidence at 32:8 and only weak evidence at 32:43, and a political motive is not supported.

God, and the questions around the sequence.

• Why anything else exists. The others are made for his glory, not out of need, which follows, and are real others, not the One in disguise, which follows against the One who is strictly each creature and is strong against its two-level form. How the One experiences being the other, in the Son and by his Spirit, is a reading (The One and the other).
• God’s attributes. The four hold together. Each attack needs a premise of its own, which fails on its merits and not only for being unstated, or sets stated texts against each other, as “God is not a man” against the Word made flesh, which is no conflict on the one name; against evil this answers the logical form, and the texts’ answer to evil as evidence is a reading (Good, evil and free will). The God who comes down to see and the calamity of Isaiah 45:7 are readings; the regret of 1 Samuel 15 is reconciled in the texts; and that God does not lie yet sends a lying spirit in judgment is no conflict, for sending a liar is not lying. The Father and the Son are one God on the premise that ‘the LORD’ is the one name both bear: that the Son is given the name is strong, and that he bears it as the one God is a reading (God’s attributes; Gap 3).
• Good, evil and free will. Choice is stated, and whether it could go either way is a reading; that God’s character is the measure of the good is a reading; moral evil comes from created wills, and God tempts no one, both stated, with 2 Samuel 24:1 read by 1 Chronicles 21:1 under R2, how the LORD’s anger and the adversary’s inciting share that act being a reading; calamity the texts give to God; the death that came through sin is the death of men, which is stated, and whether the beasts’ death before man came through sin is a reading, the reading that it did conflicting with the measured record (strong); the texts’ answer to evil as evidence is a reading; foreknowledge does not force on the accounts in which it answers to the choice, a reading; how God’s plan and human choice agree is a mystery, not a paradox, and a reading; a plan made in Christ before the world is the same pair as Acts 2:23, which follows; a broken command is punished or forgiven, not passed over, which follows; and the fullest freedom is freedom from evil, the fruit of a history, a reading (Good, evil and free will).
• The conquest. The texts give it as a judgment on what the nations did for their gods, the burning of children among it, after a stated delay and by a measure later applied to Israel, and give Amalek’s sentence its own reason, the ambush on the road from Egypt, which is stated; read in the sequence’s frame, it is a judgment on the gods themselves, a reading. Israel’s accounts use the language of total destruction for victories that left survivors, which is stated, as its neighbors’ inscriptions do, measured by others; whether the commands meant expulsion or the death of all is a reading; the children the texts name among the dead are not guilty by the texts’ own standard, yet die in the judgment of their people, as Jerusalem’s did, which the texts hold together (reconciled in the texts), and whether that is just is where readers divide, a reading; on the excavators’ dates the ground at Jericho and Ai differs from the accounts, measured by others, and the reading of the commands does not rest on it; and after Christ the war of his followers is against the powers, not peoples, which follows (The conquest).
• Terrorism and religious extremism. The texts cited for killing in God’s name are judicial laws and acts inside Israel’s commonwealth, or sayings of Jesus whose passages make the sword a household’s division and stop it at the arrest; after Christ they forbid the sword in his name, foresee killing done as worship, and test every voice that commands it by the word already given, so that “Christ commands it” is ruled out, though Christians have killed in his name (Terrorism and religious extremism).
• Man. Man is mortal, alive by God’s breath, with a spirit that returns to God at death, and is raised in the body. He does not choose his life before birth (strong), lives once (follows), and knows his own thoughts by his spirit (stated), whether the self is that spirit or the whole man being a reading; the faithful dead are with Christ (follows), and aware there (moderate); how spirit and brain are joined is open, and physics narrows it; reports from the edge of death are witnesses to be tested, a reading (Man).
• Wine, plants and desire. Plants and wine are good gifts, under conditions the texts set, and medicine’s count of risk from the first drink meets no claim of theirs (no conflict); drunkenness, sorcery and craving are false masters, and the texts tell medicine from sorcery by the end a drug serves, not by the plant (strong); under the influence a person is weakened, or for a time unaware, and answerable for what he chose; sexual delight is good within marriage, and not for children alone, and self-pleasure, which no text names, is sin where lust or mastery joins it; the child in the womb is the person who is born (strong); the pull of supernormal stimuli is old, and only its scale new; fasting is a humbling before God with an aim, and the texts command no long fast; and the door to God is the Son and his Spirit, so that a plant as another way is ruled out, and as the occasion of an encounter it has no evidence in the texts (Wine, plants and desire).
• Demons and possession. Demons are unclean spirits under the devil, within God’s limits, the gods behind the idols; in the Gospels and Acts the possessed are sufferers set free, and in all the texts those who consent to evil bear its guilt, both strong; possession has occasions but no stated mechanism; where the texts name a spirit as the cause of a boy’s seizures, medicine names the brain, so that there the texts and the sciences part, which follows, unless the spirit works through the brain’s own events, which is not shown; and the evil that people do comes from the heart, with the devil as tempter and deceiver. Where demons come from is a reading (Demons and possession).
• Salvation. It is by grace, through faith in Christ, with repentance, and shown in deeds, which is stated; Paul and James agree when each verb is read in its own passage, which is reconciled in the texts. Christ bore the sins of others by his own will and God’s, which is stated, and the charge that this punishes the innocent and acquits the guilty is reconciled in the texts; that the bearing was the Law’s penalty is moderate, satisfaction is a reading, and victory over the powers and love shown are stated, none of them the whole. Whether those who never heard are saved through Christ without knowing him, whether baptism is necessary in every case, and whether salvation can be lost are readings on which the churches divide; whether one who takes his own life can be saved, no text says (open); and the sin that will not be forgiven is the charge that the Spirit’s work is an unclean spirit’s, which follows (Salvation).
• Old covenant and new. Before the Law, the commands God gave Abraham for his own life were his alone, which follows; circumcision, the one laid on his house, is fulfilled in Christ, which is stated; and what stands is what they asked of him, faith, the walk before God and doing what is right and just, which follows. In Christ the moral commands are given again and deepened, nine of the ten among them, which follows; sacrifice, priesthood, the laws of clean and unclean food, feasts, circumcision and the Sabbath day are fulfilled in him and not laid on Gentile believers, which is stated; the church’s penalty is exclusion and the sword the state’s, which is stated; Moses’ permission of divorce is set back to the beginning, with Matthew’s one exception; and how the Law’s ‘forever’ and Matthew 5:18 stand with these, whether Jewish believers keep the customs, and whether the tithe binds after Christ are readings (Old covenant and new).
• A happy life. The texts command love of God and neighbor, contentment, thanks, giving, forgiveness, worship together, work, the enjoyment of God’s gifts and joy through trials; research quoted here finds six of these eleven, some in part, linked to happiness or well-being, mostly by association and with small effects in trials, a witness and not a premise; the texts promise no wealth to faith, which rules out the prosperity reading; and they keep the laments of the faithful, so that grief is not disobedience, which follows (A happy life).
• Hell. A good God may punish without end on what the texts state, which follows; that such punishment keeps their measure by deeds is, for the lost, a reading, and that goodness to all is no promise that every life is a good on the whole is moderate; his wish that all be saved stands with his plan on either of two readings, a reading. The devil, the beast and the false prophet are tormented without end, which is stated; universal restoration is ruled out, which follows; no one condemned is restored, which is moderate; the fire was made for the rebel powers, not for people, who come to it on the ground Matthew 25 gives, which is moderate; the lost are judged by their deeds and by degree, and whether the second death ends them or torments them without end is a reading; the angels who sinned are tormented without end, which is moderate (Hell under the four attributes).
• Heaven. Heaven is God’s throne and council now; the faithful dead are with Christ, which follows, and aware there, waiting, which is moderate, and a purification after death is not shown; at the end heaven is joined to a new earth, which is strong, where the raised do not marry, which follows, and are together and know one another, which is strong; whether the meeting in the air leads first to heaven is a reading; and the council is made new, which is moderate (Heaven).
• Israel. God has not rejected Israel for good: its unbelief was foretold and judged, and is partial and for a time, and its call is irrevocable, which is stated; no one is saved apart from Christ, and in the canon the forgiveness the prophets promise on repentance is grounded in his death, reconciled in the texts; Israel was chosen for the blessing of the nations, not for its merit, which is strong in the canon and moderate in the Hebrew alone, and God judges without partiality, which is stated; the Jewish readings, the servant of Isaiah 53 as Israel and the Messiah’s works not yet done, are readings of the prophets alone, which the canon answers by naming the servant and setting those works at his return; the Talmud’s passages on Jesus are a witness to how it answered the Gospel story (moderate), not to the events (weak); that “all Israel” is the people is strong, and the reading that makes it the whole people of God weaker, and whether at the end or through the ages is a reading; present unbelief and abiding election are no paradox, which follows; and Israel today is open (Israel).
• The mysteries. How evil began in a good creation, why it lasts as it does, how God’s plan works within a real choice, how three are one, the resurrection body, life between death and the resurrection, the end of the lost and heaven beyond what is stated stay open, each bounded by the texts that state what can be known of it; and ten further questions, from those who never heard to life on other worlds, are set out with their grades (Mysteries and open questions).

The rivals and the witnesses. A Course in Miracles, the Hermetic writings, analytic idealism, cosmopsychism read without limit and conscious creation taken as a metaphysics settle everything only by denying what the texts state; the Urantia Book and The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean are not evidence, and the Emerald Tablet settles nothing; Wink’s account of the powers, taken whole, is set aside by R4; Rohr’s and Boersma’s readings are set aside where they make the creature and the Creator one; the other newer schools offer readings of what the texts leave open. Gnosis, as Irenaeus reports it, gives the world to a lower maker who mistakes himself for the only God and sets the God of the Law against the Father of Jesus, each against a stated text, while Basilides’ angels, who share out the nations, show that the allotment of 32:8 was read early (Gnosis). The Quran agrees with the texts on Jesus’ birth of a virgin, his title of Messiah, his signs and his being taken up to God, and contradicts them on his deity, his sonship and his death on the cross; its “it appeared so unto them” is beyond any record’s test (The Quran on Jesus). One Hermetic book, the Asclepius, is a witness for step 8: it holds that the gods of the temples were spirits joined to images, and Augustine reads it so, where Lactantius’s reading of it as a witness to the Son fails (strong). Older tablets from Sumer, Ugarit and the Jordan Valley show the council, the flood, one speech for all, the kings before the flood and the serpent of the sea pictured before the texts were written, or before most of them took their final form; that Isaiah 27:1 takes up a Canaanite picture is strong, as is that Genesis and the Babylonian tablets tell the flood as one story, while which drew on which is a reading, and the link to Babel is weak; they are background, not premises. Of the 43 finds set out beside the texts, 38 confirm something they set in history and 18 differ from them at a named point; from the ninth century BC to the exile, with Shishak’s campaign before it, and in the first century AD, the texts’ history stands beside its neighbors’ records again and again, and was written from knowledge of real kings and real events, which is strong; Egypt’s own records show features the texts give but fix no date for Israel’s time in Egypt and show none of its events, and where the ground has been searched it shows no camp of the wilderness years and no city to take at Jericho or Ai on the excavators’ dates, so that for these the texts’ history is not shown, and where the ground speaks it differs, on a reading; the appearances were reported in the earliest list of them, by one who had met two of the witnesses within a few years, which is strong; whether there was a known tomb found empty, and what the disciples saw, is where the historians divide: as history, not shown either way; in the texts, stated (Confirmations). The world’s count of years from his birth, set five centuries on and taken up with the calendar of the West, is a witness to the weight his life carried with those who came after (strong), not evidence for the events (Confirmations, the count of the years). All of these are witnesses, not premises.

Science. The texts and the sciences reconcile, with one exception: Genesis 1–11 read as literal history conflicts with the measured ages, in its six thousand years and in a planet-wide flood about 4,500 years ago, and with the measured genome, in one couple as the source of every human genome a few thousand years ago and in a flood that left eight people, which is strong. Every other clash has a reading that removes it, or stays open, where no text decides or the science itself is unsettled. No step of the sequence rests on the age of the earth or the universe, the clocks or the quantum; step 7 joins Deuteronomy 32:8 to the nations of Genesis 10 in the order the story tells, and the Flood’s reach decides who those nations were in history, not that link (Before Adam; Physics).

Words. Jealous, hate, fear, firstborn, helper, submit, slave, abomination, murder and the rest are read in their own passages, not in senses English has given them since; where a word has two senses, as hate, fear and firstborn do, its passage decides, and so read they carry no cruelty or contradiction the texts do not state (Words read today in another sense).

The skeptics’ questions. The hardest are set against the texts, each with its grade: the texts regulate slavery and do not abolish it, keep Israelites from being sold and let Israel hold foreigners for life (stated), and make kidnapping a capital crime, so that the defense of American slavery contradicts them wherever it defends the trade in stolen people (follows); that they contradict it on the holding of slaves is not shown, and that the Law permitted slavery as Moses permitted divorce, for hardness of heart (Matthew 19:8), is a reading; man and woman both bear God’s image and are one in Christ (stated), and that this makes them equal is a reading; the near prophecies, Tyre, the Gospels’ differences, David’s line and the numbers of parallel accounts are stated, and the harmonies R2 requires are readings, save one the texts reconcile; that a council invented the four Gospels is ruled out by Irenaeus’s date, and which books belong no text of the canon states (open); the manuscripts’ largest additions are known, and no step quotes them (measured); that parts of the Torah were written or updated after Moses is strong, and some under the kings moderate; that Daniel was finished in the 160s BC is strong on the record; the rest of authorship is a reading; the virgin birth rests on the narratives (stated), Isaiah’s sign had a child of Ahaz’s day (follows), and that the Greek translator read the young woman as a virgin is moderate; the hard stories stand in frames the texts state, their sharpest points are named, and whether the frames answer the charge is a reading; the texts give hiddenness a purpose (stated), and whether it requires that some be left without what would persuade them is open; the crucifixion was reported from the first, and the Quran’s ‘it appeared so’ is beyond any record’s test (not evidence either way; The Quran on Jesus); the sexual commands are restated (stated); the copycat claim, in Graves’s form, is rejected by the scholars quoted, skeptics among them (strong), and that the Gospels tell a god’s union with a woman is not supported; the jealousy of God is a husband’s claim against rival gods, not envy (strong), enforced in judgment (stated), and the fathers’ iniquity is a conflict of plain senses that R2’s harmony, a reading, resolves; and Deuteronomy 22:28–29 makes a girl the wife of the man who seized her (stated), the seizing is a forcing (moderate), the scholars divide on it, and that the law does not bind after Christ is a reading. Where plain senses conflict, it is R2, not a text, that makes the harmony; and none breaks a step of the sequence, for the steps claim what the texts state, not when they were written or that they are true (Skeptics’ questions).

Conclusion. The divine-council sequence is a faithful reading of the texts as they stand, and not a modern invention: Jubilees, the Targum, Origen, Eusebius, Cyril and Augustine drew its links long before the Ugaritic tablets were found, and even Basilides, who denied that the LORD is the Most High, read the allotment in 32:8. It is not the only reading at every point: the Masoretic “children of Israel” is a weaker alternative; whom the “Us” of Genesis 1:26 includes, the council or the Father and the Son, is a reading (step 3); and Psalm 82’s gods are the sons of God on one reading and human judges on another (Joint 2). Followed through, the texts tell one story: nations once paired with lesser powers (strong) and ruled by them (moderate), which are judged, disarmed and at the end destroyed, are reclaimed by God through his Son and shared with his people. Its end is stated, and its beginning, taken whole, is a reading; and every question taken up here, from the conquest to a happy life, sits inside that story without breaking it, for its steps claim what the texts state, and a question of whether the texts are true cannot break a claim of that kind. Where the texts state, on the questions the solver enters, the answer is one, and the solver finds the deductions entered consistent; where two texts conflict in their plain sense, as on the end of the lost (Hell under the four attributes) and on the numbers of parallel accounts (Skeptics’ questions, 28), it is R2, not a text, that sets one reading aside, and the harmony it requires is graded; where they leave a question open, this document says so and grades its answer.

Read by its plain words, the sequence is a conditional proof: if the premises below hold, the conclusions follow. The premises are what the texts state, read by four rules; the links the texts do not state are marked as joints and links, and each is graded. A logic solver (Z3) checks each deduction and contradiction entered below, and that the whole set is consistent; the sections after the sequence are argued in prose, and the solver checks only the deductions from them entered here. What a check shows is limited. A deduction is checked on its entries, and whether an entry reads its text rightly is graded in the prose, not by the solver. A consistency check shows only that the entries can all be true together. So that the checks can fail, controls drop a verse, a premise or a joint, and the result must then change (1a, 1c, 4b, 4p, 4q, 4r); in section 3 a contrary entry must make the whole inconsistent. Section 6 is a count in Python over entries made by hand, with six solver checks on the readings it sets aside or keeps. All 137 checks pass.

Reading rules.

• R1. The canon is read as one. Other ancient writings are witnesses to how the texts were read, never premises.
• R2. The canon is read so that it does not contradict itself: a reading that makes two stated texts contradict each other is set aside.
• R3. A word such as ‘all’ is read with the limits its own passage states.
• R4. A word keeps its plain sense unless its own passage, or R2, requires another.

R2 builds consistency into the reading: what survives it is consistent because a reading that is not is set aside. The checks below therefore show which readings survive together; they do not show that the texts force them.

What a premise may be. The study’s premises are of four kinds, and each is marked where it is used: the stated texts (S1–S15 below, and the texts entered in 1a–6); premises that only fix the meaning of a word, such as that nothing surrounds itself or is made by itself; the four reading rules; and inferred links, each graded: the joints, step 2’s identity of the company, step 7’s link and the others below. A premise of the study’s own that is neither stated nor a meaning premise nor a rule counts as an inferred link, and is graded. An attack on the texts is weighed by the same measure. The solver shows where its contradiction lies, in a premise it adds or in a stated text read in a sense its own clauses do not require (4r); whether the premise is true, or the sense right, is weighed on its merits in the prose of its section (God’s attributes; Good, evil and free will; Hell under the four attributes), not set aside for being unstated.

Premises stated by the texts.

And the four attributes of step 1: everywhere present (Jeremiah 23:24), almighty (Job 42:2), all-knowing (1 John 3:20) and good (Mark 10:18). That the princes are heavenly, and that other nations have them, is inference (Joint 1c).

Joints and links. Joint 1 in parts: 1a, the text of 32:8, “sons of God” (strong, for heavenly beings); 1b, the pairing, by route A (32:9’s contrast, with 1a) or by route B (4:19’s host as the heavenly company of step 2), strong on the two routes; 1c, the rule (Daniel 10 and 4:17, with Isaiah 24:21), moderate. Joint 2: Psalm 82’s gods are the sons of 32:8 (a reading); it presupposes 1a. Joint 3: the New Testament’s rulers and nations are those of 32:8 (moderate). Joint 4, that the LORD is not one of the sons, is derived by four routes (1a; strong in the canon); Job 42:2 supports it on a premise no text states (4b). Three links: L₇, step 7’s link of 32:8 to Genesis 10–11, which places the pairing after Babel in the story’s order (moderate); L_4:19, that 4:19’s apportionment is 32:8’s division, which route B needs for that place (weak); and L_Isa, that Isaiah 24:21’s host on high takes in the paired powers (moderate). ‘The LORD’ is read as the one God whom the Father and the Son both are (4m; a reading, Gap 3).

The derivation.

In words: the end of the story (Core) rests on stated texts alone. The beginning (Pair, then Rule) needs Joint 1; its place after Babel in the story’s order needs step 7’s link besides, and, on route B alone, L_4:19. The full story joins the end to the beginning: with Joint 1c, Ephesians 1:21 sets every paired power under the Son and 1 Corinthians 15:24 ends its rule (1c), and the bridges of section 3 tie each joint to those first-order checks. That the powers are disarmed needs Joint 3, and that they are judged needs L_Isa or Joint 2.

The dependency table. Every assignment of the nine joints and links, each true or false, is a case; Joint 2 lapses where 1a fails, for it presupposes the sons of 32:8, which leaves 384 cases. In them:

• the end of the story holds in every case;
• the full story holds exactly when route A or route B gives the pairing and Joint 1c gives the rule, and never needs Joint 2, Joint 3, step 7’s link, L_4:19 or L_Isa;
• the pairing’s place after Babel holds exactly when step 7’s link holds and route A, or route B with L_4:19, gives the pairing;
• ‘disarmed’ holds exactly when the pairing and Joint 3 hold, and ‘judged’ needs L_Isa or Joint 2 in every case where it holds.

The table is read off the definitions above, so it shows what each conclusion needs as the conclusions are defined; that the definitions read the texts rightly is graded in the steps. Read with those grades: the end of the story is stated; the pairing is strong; the full story needs Joint 1, moderate; and the beginning as told, paired, ruled and after Babel, needs Joint 1c and step 7’s link, both moderate, and is a reading (How to read the marks).

If a joint fails.

The 137 checks.

• 1a (21). Joint 4 by four routes, each a deduction with each premise dropped in turn: Psalm 89:6–8 with step 2’s identity of the company; the created host against the uncreated LORD, with step 1’s “uncreated” from Isaiah 44:24; Psalm 83:18 with 32:8’s title; and the Song’s 32:39 read as step 1 reads the denials. The historians’ reading is consistent with 32:8–9 alone and inconsistent with Psalm 83:18 and with 32:39; Psalm 97:9 gives the result only on a premise that presupposes it.
• 1b (3). Read as denying every being a text calls a god, “there is no other” contradicts Psalm 82:6 and Deuteronomy 32:17; read as denying a second who is God as the LORD is, it does not (step 1).
• 1c (8). With Joint 1c, “all rule” puts every paired power under the Son and ends its rule, with a control; ‘disarmed’ needs Joint 3, and ‘judged’ needs Isaiah 24:21’s link or Joint 2, each shown failing without it.
• 2 (7). The dependency table above.
• 3 (4). All premises, joints, links, bridges and first-order entries together are consistent; three controls must make the set inconsistent, and do: 32:8 with no sons of God, the LORD one of the sons, a paired power not under the Son.
• 4a–4e (17). The four attributes and the attacks on them (God’s attributes, 1–4 and 6): power over the impossible, with the texts’ ‘almighty’ entered as its range and its two named limits, to lie and to deny himself, and shown not empty; two almighty beings, and the Job 42:2 route, with a control; evil; the lying spirit, with lying kept apart from sending one who lies, and the narrower definition, to deceive is to send a falsehood and not disclose it, kept for 1 Kings 22; a God who regrets and dwells.
• 4f–4i (10). Hell under the four attributes: his wish and his decree, his presence, punishment without end, foreknowledge and creation. With each attack’s premise the set is inconsistent, and without it consistent; that shows where the contradiction lies, not that the premise is false, which the prose weighs (Hell under the four attributes, 1–4).
• 4j–4l (8). The One in disguise, entered as strict identity, every being the One (The One and the other, 3); the Course’s God (A Course in Miracles); mortal man and deathless spirits, with 1 Timothy 6:16 and Luke 20:36 each read two ways, and the gods of Psalm 82:7 (Man; Hell under the four attributes).
• 4m (9). One God counted. ‘The LORD’ read as one individual contradicts John 1:1’s “with God”; with one God counted, the Father and the Word each God by identity, or each a God of his own, contradict the count; two persons who are each God by the one name and nature are consistent. ‘Greater’ and ‘one’; life in himself (John 5:26); and one divine will, the Son’s yielding will his human will, against two divine wills (God’s attributes, 5–6). Consistency shows that the reading can be held, not that the texts mean it (Gap 3).
• 4n–4o (15). God’s foreknowledge and plan and human choice: foreknowledge in each future with an open choice is consistent, and with the fixity of the past added it is not; a plan fixed whichever way an open choice goes contradicts itself, and a plan that answers to the choice, or a ‘choose’ that needs no two open outcomes, does not; Peter’s foretold denials (Matthew 26:34, 75) contradict ‘a free choice cannot be known before it is made’ if they were open both ways, and Acts 2:23, read as foreknowledge of the event and not of the hands, does not; Acts 2:23 and Genesis 50:20 against their added premises; one model shown (Good, evil and free will; Mystery is not paradox).
• 4p (4). The Word did not come to be, on John 1:3’s ‘all things’ read without an exception, with a control, and is not one of the created sons (Gap 3; Mysteries and open questions, 4).
• 4q (6). The Hermetic writings: the archetypal Man ‘co-equal’ with God, with a control; men immortal by an essence derived from the essential Man, consistent with 1 Timothy 6:16 as 4l reads it, and not with the strict reading 4l sets aside; the Son’s equality, consistent; the made gods of the Asclepius (Hermes Trismegistus and the Emerald Tablet).
• 4r (3). Numbers 23:19 read in its plain sense, no bearer of the name a man, contradicts John 1:14 on the one name, and without the name given to the Word it does not; read by its own clauses, with Hebrews 4:15 and 13:8, it is consistent (God’s attributes, 7).
• 5 (5). The whole equation: every entry above that the texts state, with the four attributes, one God with the Father and the Word, and each answer as written, consistent with each reading of hell before the texts on the end are entered, and as a whole; with two Gods, inconsistent.
• 6 (17). The census of the end, counted in Python, in eleven checks: on the stated texts nine combinations remain, the devil tormented without end in all of them and universal restoration ruled out; with αἰώνιος read as in ‘eternal life’, six; adding Hebrews 2:16 in its plain sense, four, none of which restores the angels or the lost; adding R4 on either list on the lost, two each, and on both, none; the ‘all’ texts in their plain sense for every party leave none, with the devil excepted by R2 one, and that one goes beside αἰώνιος or Hebrews 2:16. Luke 20:36 is not entered (4l). Then six solver checks, four readings set aside and two kept (Hell under the four attributes).

The one answer. Where the texts state, the solver finds the entries consistent, with the four attributes and the readings R2 keeps (5). That is less than it may seem: R2 sets aside any reading that would make the canon contradict itself, and where the plain senses of stated texts collide, the census shows it, for on the end of the lost R4 on both lists leaves no answer and R2 must choose (6); the numbers of parallel accounts show it again (Skeptics’ questions, 28): there R2, not a text, requires a harmony, which harmony holds is graded, most often a reading, and none of those numbers is a premise here. Every contradiction an attack produced came from a premise of its own or from a stated text read in a sense its own clauses do not require (4r), and where an attack is taken up, its premise is also answered on its merits (God’s attributes; Good, evil and free will; Hell under the four attributes). Where the texts leave a question open, this document says so, gives its answer a grade, and shows what each answer costs: the end of the lost (a reading); that no one condemned is restored, and that the angels are tormented without end (each moderate); how God’s plan and human choice agree (a reading); how the Father and the Son are one God (a reading); and the mysteries, which are open questions, not contradictions.