GandalfTheWise

Having knowledge is knowing a series of facts. Having understanding is knowing how various facts fit together into patterns. Having wisdom is knowing how best to apply understanding to life. Knowing particular Bible verses or biblical facts is having knowledge. Knowing theology, doctrine, and how various verses fit together is having understanding. Having half a clue to know when and how to give effective godly advice based on what knowledge and understanding and life experience we might have is the start to having wisdom. Knowledge and understanding are tools for wisdom to use. It's easy to spout knowledge and understanding (i.e. toss out Bible verses and theology) to claim authority to Truth and then blame the person we are enlightening when little comes from our efforts. It's much more difficult to give godly counsel in an anointed manner that consistently results in positive changes in people. Wisdom is not just something we can find or quickly learn from others. It's something we have to practice ourselves over a lifetime to get better at it. It's common sense (in both the physical and spiritual worlds) that grows over time from our own life experiences as well as what we learn from others. It's a skill that grows sharper with practice over years and decades. It only comes from years of walking with God and in community with others with an open humble heart to consistently grow and learn. If I had to give a single piece of advice for gaining wisdom, it would be this. Read and listen to many many testimonies of what God has done in a wide wide range of different people's lives in many different situations and places and churches and denominations to learn from the many different ways God works in people. At its core, wisdom is based on having an intimate familiarity with God Himself and how He works in people's lives.

A number of years ago we picked up a small telescope. Seeing the 4 large moons of Jupiter and Saturn's rings is cool. We moved a couple years ago. About a month ago, those two planets were visible. We dug into the storage room and put the telescope together so our neighbor's daughter (who's an adult with kids of her own) got to look through a telescope for the first time. It was fun to see the excitement on someone's face seeing those things for the first time. In hindsight, one thing I kick myself about is that when I was in grad school, I was too busy to make time to go out to the department's observatory (about 20 miles away from campus) even though I knew of a few of the people running it and who probably would have let me in to see things.

One of my frustrations on WCF (and other sites) is that discussions of Greek texts rarely include a good historical overview. Here's an overview that omits many many details. In the absence of the printing press, all documents were produced by hand. Depending on your resources, you might hire a professional scribe (which was a common occupation) or have a friend with good handwriting do it. In general, this was a good process though imperfect. Many such documents contain corrections in margins or above or below text where a proof-reader observed an error. Depending on what you could afford, you could have cheaper or more expensive materials, often parchment (expensive and durable) or papyrus (cheaper). The earliest individual Christians and various churches likely hired scribes to make copies of various writings (including those that would be recognized as part of canon). In the first few centuries, it is likely that there was little organization to this. The oldest portions of the NT which exist from this era are primarily small sections of individual pages or a handful of pages that survived. Due to the simple nature of papyrus, it survived better in arid desert regions than in humid environments. That's why most of oldest NT fragments are from desert regions in the middle east. [Imagine copying the entire books of Luke and Acts by hand with no chapter or verse numbers from someone else's handwritten copy. Now imagine how every available copy of Luke and Acts was produced that way from copies of copies. Now imagine doing this if you have some sort of time pressure like the master copy is only available for a few weeks while someone is visiting you and then you loan your copy to someone else to use.] As Christianity became more dominant and more organized, more resources become available to churches (and gov't e.g. Constantine) to make more expensive copies of the NT. The church also established the canon and started to become more concerned with textual matters. At this point, very expensive and comprehensive copies of the Greek NT were produced. I'd strongly recommend going to csntm.org (Center for Studies of NT Manuscripts) to actually see images of some of them. A handful of 4th, 5th and 6th century parchment manuscripts which contain virtually all of the NT are the oldest complete or nearly complete Greek NT manuscripts in existence. Over the next millennia, a large political shift occurred. The Greek speaking world shrank. In places where Greek was no longer spoken, Christians (outside of scholars) stopped using the Greek NT and used either a translation into their language or Latin. Monasteries and older churches were the only place where Greek NT manuscripts were housed and copies were no longer made in those places. Eventually, only the eastern roman empire (byzantine empire) was the only place Christians were actively using the Greek NT as their main NT. One of the things this led to was some scholars and copyists replacing older Greek spellings and usage with then contemporary ones. It also meant that the original master copies residing in Constantinople and powerful churches became the ones used as the basis for later copies made there. Also, at this point in time, Christian scholars and copyists became aware of differences between older manuscripts and started to add footnotes into their copies indicating this. Most of the existing manuscripts today trace their origins to the byzantine empire simply because they were the last of the Greek speaking Christians using the Greek NT as their primary NT and they simply made more copies of what they were using. It is extremely important to note that the Greek NT manuscript which any Greek speaking individual or church had was their NT. They couldn't go online and order a copy. They used the one they had available. In western Europe, Latin dominated so Greek was largely forgotten and not used outside a few scholarly circles. Erasmus was one of the first western scholars to produce a Greek NT from the few partial manuscripts he had available which were basically only a few centuries old. His resulting eclectic text was the first western edition of the Greek NT produced by comparing older Greek manuscripts to each other and picking the most likely reading of the originals. Any Greek NT text produced from multiple manuscripts is referred to as an eclectic text. A string of succeeding scholars and printers built on his work. As time went on, they found more and more Greek manuscripts. At first, most of the ones they had were relatively recent ones from the byzantine church. As they found more and more, they made changes to Erasmus' original. One particular printer (basically as advertising and a title to distinguish it from previous editions) called his Greek NT "The Received Text" (or Textus Receptus in Latin). It is important to note that this was a continuing process where more and more older manuscripts (usually byzantine in nature) were found and started to be incorporated into the eclectic text. No one ever stopped and declared the process done but rather saw it as an ongoing process of discovery and work. Up to this point, the western eclectic texts (of which the Textus Receptus is but one), were based primarily on the relatively recent byzantine texts. Then, as archaeologists started to explore the middle east, ancient non-byzantine texts started to be discovered. At first, the non-byzantine texts were somewhat ignored because they had unexpected variations. But then, scholars started to realize that these non-byzantine texts were snapshots in time of the Greek NT that Christians outside the byzantine empire had been using as their NT. One find in particular was when Tischendorf was visiting a monastery in the Sinai and eventually found out they had in their possession a 4th century parchment of the complete Greek NT. During this period of time, Christian scholars started to find manuscripts which were several centuries and even a millennia older than the ones they had available. More and more eclectic texts were started to be created using these older manuscripts. This has been an ongoing work of scholars for centuries. It is an oversimplification and misleading to say that there is the Textus Receptus and a modern eclectic text. It is much more accurate to say that there is a progression of many eclectic texts produced by many scholars with different opinions as to how various ancient manuscripts should be treated. Erasmus is noted for having been a significant pioneer in the west of the first published eclectic text. Westscott and Hort are noted for being pioneers of using older non-byzantine manuscripts as the primary basis for an eclectic text. Christian scholars are still studying this today. Today, we have two options open to us for dealing with this history of the Greek NT. The first option is that only one of these is God's real NT. If so, then Christians must determine which manuscript or eclectic text is the real NT and make sure that only that one is used. This is an all or nothing approach where the real NT will be completely correct in every verse and letter. The second option is to look at each of these manuscripts as an individual witness to what the original text was. This is done on a verse by verse basis. It involves the dialog, discussion, and working together of many Christians scholars as to which witnesses to a particular verse are most credible and why they think so. At its core, the root debate is whether God appointed a few particular scholars and printers to be anointed and error-free in their production of an eclectic Greek NT for all Christians to now exclusively use for all time, or whether He gave this work to the church as something ongoing for each generation to be a part of the transmission and translation of the NT. A few points which need to be made. It should be emphasized that the vast majority of variations from manuscript to manuscript are minor things such as spelling gray or grey or switching the word order of a few words. The second is that the vast majority of variations are probably best explained by some copyist not paying attention for a few moments or being distracted and missing a line or accidentally repeating a line, filling in something from memory of a similar text, or things like that. Anyway, this is an attempt to provide a big picture view of things.

This statement seems to carry the assumption that the only purpose God ever has in speaking is to the entire church definitively for all times and never to individuals or local groups for guidance or direction for a particular time and place. I see the fundamental matter about revelation today as this. Did God only speak once to Christians through the Bible? or does God continue to speak today to all Christians individually and corporately in ways which will always be consistent with the Bible? My view is that something fundamental changed about revelation on the Day of Pentecost. Prior to that, God's Spirit would come upon specially chosen people temporarily for the purpose of speaking God's words or being empowered in a special way. After Pentecost, God's Spirit was on all believers to be able to speak His words. Unlike the OT when God used specially chosen prophets, today the Holy Spirit (God Himself) resides in all believers. I think that is much of what Jesus meant when He said the least in the Kingdom of Heaven was greater than John the Baptist. John was the culmination of the OT prophetic line who pointed out and baptized the Messiah. What is different about each of us compared to John? The Holy Spirit lives inside of us. Prior to Christ's death and resurrection, it was about striving to know the Law and follow it. After His resurrection, it is about knowing God and having Him live inside of us and transforming us. If we see the primary point of the Bible as being a series of rules or a theology textbook, we focus on it as a once-for-all revelation that can never be added to. If we see the primary point of the Bible as pointing us to God, we see it as a history of what God has done and a guide for what He will continue to do in the future.

Luke, Mark, James (depending on which James wrote the book), and Jude were authors of NT books and were not capital-A Apostles. The vast majority of Christians today would also consider the early church fathers who determined the canon of the NT to be inspired in some infallible way by the Holy Spirit as well. Acts 13:1-4 makes it appear the Holy Spirit spoke in some way to all of the elders at Antioch. If it had been to Paul alone, it's likely Luke would have recorded it that the Holy Spirit spoke to Paul who then spoke to the others. In Acts 9, God spoke directly to Ananias in a vision. As other have mentioned, guidance and prophecy are associated with non-Apostles, e.g. Agabus, Mary, Philip's daughters, and many nameless converts in which it is described that they spoke in tongues and prophesied when the Holy Spirit came on them. Various lists of gifts in the church also seem to suggest strongly that various forms of revelation occurred in people who were not Apostles. I think one aspect that few people consider is what "taught" really means. I think today many Christians in the west have this idea of the Holy Spirit giving a special few capital-A Apostles the first classes in advanced systematic theology once and for all. To a large degree, much of the church today idolizes doctrine and theology and sees it as something for all Christians to aspire toward knowing perfectly. In contrast, my sense is that the early church was much more focused on knowing God Himself and walking with Him. It was about knowing Jesus Christ, being transformed by the Holy Spirit, and seeing the hand of God active in their lives. My sense is that the early church considered being "taught" of the Holy Spirit to be more related to living life and knowing God rather than our Western view of being "taught" as aspiring to have perfect intellectual doctrinal knowledge of Christian theology. I would relate this to the difference of people who consider "faith" to be completely convinced (with no doubts) of various intellectual positions versus those who consider "faith" to be trust and confidence and assurance in God Himself which grows over time because of the months and years and decades that they've seen Him active in their lives. Is the main point of being "taught" by God to have intellectual perfection or to have Him show us how to walk with Him in our daily lives?

I'd also add sharing one's personal testimony of what God's done in their life.

@Hallelujah Joan For the past decade or so, I've been researching learning. In particular, why some people seem capable of prodigious feats of learning. For example, the person who can use a dozen languages, the person who plays several musical instruments and can learn a new one in a short time, or the computer guru who seems to be able to learn and use any program. It took awhile, but I realized there were some principles that underly this. Basically, it is this. If you work with your brain, you will see more success. If you fight your brain, you will not. For the vast majority of us, learning to sing the happy birthday song was done in accord with how our brain naturally assimilates things. In contrast, memorizing the periodic table of elements or other such things was usually done in a way fighting our brain. Unfortunately, many of us picked up from school a no-pain/no-gain approach of learning whereby we see our brain as a stubborn mule that needs to be kicked and beaten to do any work rather than a marvelous thing that easily assimilates information from the world around us. Here's my recommended approach to Bible memorization now. The most important thing is this. Whatever you do should make you eager to come back the next day to do it again! As soon as you start having to force yourself to work at it (telling yourself to hang in there because it's good for you), that is the beginning of the end. If you are starting to become frustrated or bored, that is a warning sign you need to do things differently. Purpose to make this an enjoyable and satisfying part of your life rather than an obligation. Decide how much time you will put into this *daily* and when. Perhaps 15 minutes during lunch, or while riding a bus or commuting, or 5 to 10 minutes when you get up and when you go to bed. The critical things are to do it daily and to do it at a time you are alert and eager. It's better to start with a smaller amount of time that leaves you wanting to do more than being too ambitious and forcing yourself to work the last half hour of the hour you allotted for this. Your best learning occurs when your brain is engaged and enjoying it. Learn what this feels like and how long it typically lasts. Do NOT put numeric goals or deadlines on your progress. You will learn at the rate you learn! Don't beat yourself up for not being realistic about how fast learning will occur. Rejoice over the progress you make rather than be discouraged over too slow a pace. Resist the temptation to put more and more time and effort to reach deadlines. This is what causes many people to burn out and give up. Your main goal should be ever increasing familiarity with a passage rather than comparing yourself to timed perfection. Use multiple methods. Combine listening with reading and reciting. Find an audio version of the translation you use to memorize. There are several free ones online of various versions. You could also record yourself (or a friend with a pleasant voice) reading it out loud. The more different ways you can expose your brain to the passage, the more quickly and thoroughly your brain will assimilate it. There are several combinations of methods you can use with audio and the printed text. You can listen, you can listen and speak along, you can listen and read along, you can read out loud. You could put the audio on autorepeat to play over and over in the background while you are doing something else. What you are trying to do is to mimic the process whereby you learned the happy birthday song or one of the many Christmas carols or hymns you probably know sections of by heart. Repeated pleasant exposure to the entire passage (or at least full sentences or longer phrases) helps your brain assimilate the passage in its entirety. This is in contrast to toiling at rote word by word memorization in a manner reminiscent of memorizing the abbreviations for all of the elements or some other set of information in school that you are then tested on. The important thing is figuring out what is most enjoyable and works best for you. Perhaps you will find a few of these methods work best when you start learning a passage and other methods are better for fine-tuning it later. Perhaps you do one method when you get up in the morning and a different one when driving. You need to figure out what works best for you. Note that recent research has suggested that the best long term learning occurs when things are learned in their larger context. This is slower but much more thorough. An oversimplified explanation is that your brain is seeing the passage as a united whole where each word is a part of the bigger picture. Your brain slowly assimilates and becomes familiar with the entire picture and gradually remembers more and more details intimately connected with other details. In contrast, the best short term learning occurs when you break things up into small chunks and drill yourself over and over on each small chunk. This is what we've all learned in school in order to get better grades on tests. When rote memorizing a passage, forcing yourself to learn word after word in a verse gives you the impression of progress and allows you to initially recite a passage from memory in a shorter time period. However, your brain is not doing as good of a job assimilating the passage. As an oversimplified explanation, your brain is seeing each word as something that follows another word. As soon as you start forgetting one word, the chain around it falls apart and you need to rebuild it. In order to keep it active and accurate, you will need to review and review. In contrast, repeated pleasant exposure to the passage via multiple methods for a short time every day will over time will create a long-term familiarity with it. For example, fill in the following. Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Joyful.... or Silent night, Holy night, All... I doubt a single one of us ever sat down intending to memorize these lyrics but there they are ready to come out as soon as we think about it. We sing them a couple times per year in December. Few of us probably remember all of the lyrics to the verses perfectly and there are holes in our recall of them, but if we were to listen to each song and read the lyrics once per week for a few months, chances are that we'd remember more and more of each song. In contrast, think of various things you "memorized" in school for class after class but no longer have in active memory. It would take almost as much effort now to get the information back as when we first "learned" it. Anyway, some general advice based on what I've been researching for some time now.

@one.opinion, @Starman I've been enjoying following this discussion. I appreciate the good will and honesty.

My opinion is that sins typically fit into one of three categories: ignorance, immaturity, and spiritual injury. Sins of ignorance are trivial things; God prompts us that something is unhealthy and we just stop doing it. This might be through reading the Bible, listening to a sermon, hearing someone tell us something, or just a sense of right and wrong in our conscience. Sins of immaturity gradually vanish over time as we spiritually grow. This is when fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-23) grows and manifests in our lives over time. Then there are sins (often addictions or compulsive behaviors) that are symptoms of an underlying crippling emotional or spiritual injury that God needs to heal us from in some way. This might be something miraculous in a moment that we are freed from or God might use a process over time involving other people such as friends, or a pastor or counselor. The important thing is to focus on what God wants you to change today. Develop good spiritual disciplines in your life such as regular Bible reading and study, prayer and meditation, being with other Christians, and similar things. Often we get focused on dealing with sin via the "new years resolution" method, we try very hard to change ourselves targeting what we think is most serious. Learn how things such as Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, etc. best work in your life. We are all different and what works well for one person may not work for another. Listen and read about what other people do and then experiment to find what works best for you (which can change over time). As a new Christian, you are going to find that Christians tend to agree on the practical matters of what God does in our lives, but often disagree vehemently about theological explanations of how and why God does those things. You will find some Christians are more concerned that you agree with their explanations more than if you are actually being transformed into the unique person God intends for you to be in Christ. Over decades of watching Christians, I've found that the most important thing is the actual fruit exhibited in someone's life. It's easy to talk the talk by quoting a bunch of Bible verses and spouting reams of theological jargon, but a deep and abiding and permanent transformation into a person for whom fruit of the Spirit (again see Gal 5:22-23) is an integral part of their life only comes with years of walking with God and being transformed. With regard to sin in our lives, much of what you will hear is theoretical theology based on someone's opinions rather than actual practical guidance on healthy growth. Some Christians have theological reasons to insist that "we all sin daily in thought, word, or deed" and can never escape sin but should always throw ourselves into a mostly losing battle fighting sin because it's the right thing to do. Others have theological reasons why we should at some point be delivered from sin putting a heavy burden on people because they aren't finding perfect deliverance. Sadly, many Christians will go so far as to denounce anyone who disagrees on these various explanations as being a heretic and perhaps not even being a Christian. The best explanation I have at this point is that sin is falling short of God's intentions for our lives. I used to define this legalistically via a set of rules we fail to perfectly follow. I now define it in this way. God created each of us as unique individuals that are intended to reflect His glory in some way unique to each of us. Before we come to Christ, we are a mixture of fallenness, imperfection, sin, and corruption along with some parts which are who God intended us to be. Perhaps an example is a defaced work of art that amidst the damage still shows some of the Artist's original work. Christ's atoning work sets us in right standing with God and then He starts the process of restoring that work of art to what He originally intended. I used to constantly ask the question, "What does God want me to do?" I'd then try very hard and then beat myself up for not being able to always follow through. I learned that a much better question to answer is "Who does God want me to be?" As we become who God wants us to be, our behaviors and thoughts naturally start to align in a healthy spiritual direction. God's Spirit simply naturally flows through our lives.

I've mostly left off interacting on this site (as a positive move away for spending time on other things and not as a bad reaction to something) but check back on occasion. I just happened to see this post. I'm not sure I have much to add to what's already been said. Over my adult life, my wife and I have been in about 10 different churches with about half of the transitions being caused by moving to a new location and half from just being called to be somewhere different. We've averaged probably about 3 to 5 years in each. The reality is that community tends to occur in groups small enough so people can spend some meaningful time interacting. In a smaller church, this can occur with the main services and associated things such as Sunday school or studies. To some degree, you can just show up on Sunday morning and community will just happen. It tends to happen more easily simply because most people are acquainted with most other people. Just showing up allows you to invest in community building. However, in a larger church, community mainly occurs in focused ministries and small groups. This usually means meeting people and doing things outside of the main services at different times of the week. It has to be done more intentionally. After a lifetime of being in smaller churches (where most people knew most people), we've now been in two large churches in a row. At first, I didn't like the idea of a large church, but have found that there is much more opportunity for community outside the main services. We found that getting involved in small groups and focused ministries is where we've met the most people and gotten to know them. We've then found that the larger services feel more personal given that we usually know a number of people from the smaller groups. We just moved to a new town a bit over a year ago and have been taking my wife's mom to her large church (where she's been for probably 20 years or more) and by default that's become our church. I really don't feel like I fit in that much, but found a men's small group there that is okay. I probably don't know more than a few dozen people at this point, but the number is slowly increasing. My most regular attendance is now in the small groups rather than the main services. The reality is that we don't know most people in the large churches (though many faces become familiar). A large church will never have that same feel where you can look around and know most people. There will be times of being surrounded by a crowd you don't know. However, if it is a healthy church, there will be ample opportunities for community in the various ministries and groups. In a smaller church (especially one you've been in for many years), you can just show up and interact. Many people find community in both large and small churches. It does take getting used to to switch from one to the other.

A week or so ago there was a DOS (denial of service) type of attack that took the site down to a crawl where it might take 30 to 60 seconds to load a page. Everyone was affected. It's possible the remedy to resolve that may have affected various ranges of IP addresses or incoming connections.

I chuckled a bit when I read this. A fair generalization of some people's reactions to paradigm shifts.

Much of the complaining I read about individual ministries and congregations is about judging by appearances and preferences. The music's too loud or too boring or too whatever. The worship is either too frozen or too wild. The preaching and teaching is not to my taste; it's either irrelevant to my life or doesn't dig deep enough. There are either too many new believers who are not maturing fast enough or seekers making them look bad or there are not enough new believers showing they don't preach the gospel enough. They are either too involved with social causes or too aloof or unconcerned to help those in physical need. They either have too much sin (showing they aren't preaching the real gospel) or they're too legalistic with too many rules. The congregation doesn't have enough kids because they've failed to reach the next generation, or they have too many kids being a distraction, or they've segregated the kids away from the adults too much to not be a distraction. They don't hold the correct doctrinal beliefs on non-essentials. They are too large which means that they are compromising the gospel for numbers or they are too small which means they are too legalistic and spiritually dead to grow. Threads like this seem to bring out a number of pet peeves and one size fits all solutions. If only congregations or ministries would do X, Y or Z, then they'd really be preaching the gospel and living the Christian life and would start growing (or start shrinking to a God-pleasing holy remnant). Many Christians inadvertently idolize particular aspects of Christian practice such as how worship is done, how the Bible is taught, how the gospel should be shared, what particular ministries should be active in a congregation, what standards for behavior or dress a ministry or congregations should have, or what doctrinal beliefs are essential and which are not. Over my life, there've been about two dozen different congregations and ministries (covering about 15 to 20 denominations) I've been involved with for periods of months or longer that I've gotten to see up close. I've seen thriving ministries, struggling ministries, and dying ministries for myself firsthand. At this point in my life, here are the three things I tend to judge a ministry by. First, is there a core of solid mature praying believers that are the real heart of the ministry? Second, is there solid spiritual growth occurring in many of the people associated with and being reached out to by the ministry? Third, do they really tangibly love each other? In my opinion, everything else is secondary to these three things. These three things always seem to be present when God's Spirit is present and active in a ministry.

I'd be curious to see the references for this. The apparatus in the Nestle-Aland (NA) version is usually pretty good about indicating when there is conflicting older evidence for various readings. It is interesting in the NA apparatus that both Luke 11:2 and 11:4 have extensive variations across manuscripts associated with them whereas Luke 11:3 has minimal variation. This suggests that the textual tradition of 11:3 was much more stable than the verses on either side of it. I typically use the NA apparatus (mainly because it's what I have access to) but am aware that the big critical apparatus publications (usually quite expensive and only owned by libraries) might have more. As far as I can tell, manuscript P75 (commonly dated at late 2nd or early 3rd century) is one of the earliest existing manuscripts with that part of Luke. It's a bit hard to read, but in this link http://www.csntm.org/manuscript/View/GA_P75?filter=1, the entire phrase τον αρτον ημων τον επιουσιον appears. It starts at the end of the 8th line and continues into the 9th line. The word ημων is split across the lines and 1 letter is missing/obscured in the lacuna (missing section) at the left end of line 9. As an aside, wow!!!!! it is so cool to be able to go online and see an image of something that was likely physically written around 1800 years ago and see the actual words and handwriting rather than a transcription. The scribe who wrote it (or more likely his parents or grandparents) potentially could have met an old person who as a child heard one of the original apostles speak. Fifty years ago, this manuscript was sitting in a private collection where only a few scholars could see it and now it's digitized and online for all of us to see.

The Greek readings of both Matt 6:11 and Luke 11:3 are both well attested in antiquity. The various modern edited Greek texts including TR, WH, NA, UBS, and others are all essentially identical for each verse. τον αρτον ημων τον επιουσιον δος ημιν σημερον (Matt 6:11 TR1550) τον αρτον ημων τον επιουσιον διδου ημιν το καθ ημεραν (Luke 11:3 TR1550) Note that αρτος (bread) directly appears in each of them. The phrase "give us daily" or "give us each day" is slightly different the end of each phrase. The phrase τον επιουσιον is an adjective associated with τον αρτον ημων (our bread). The entire phrase τον αρτον ημων τον επιουσιον clearly means "our epiousion bread" where we unfortunately do not have a clear definition of what this means. Overall, translators are in agreement both verses basically mean "give us our epiousion bread each day" however there is no known definitive meaning for επιουσιος. The word επιουσιος seems to be unique to the NT and does not appear anywhere else in ancient Greek writings except quotations and paraphrases in early Christian writings. As far as I can tell, the best guess is that someone in the early church coined a Greek work to translate an Aramaic word. Without the use of the word in other contexts in other writings, it is difficult to directly ascertain what it meant. This means that scholars and translators must take their best guess as to the intended meaning. There seem to be two different ways translators approach the phrase τον επιουσιον. The first goes back at least as far as the Latin Vulgate which basically treats it as a synonym for daily as do some of the church fathers. This seems to have influenced translations for centuries as well as the memorized form of the Lord's Prayer. The other is to use its most apparent literal meaning which is probably something like necessary or essential or sufficient. As far as I can tell, translational inertia and the common usage of "give us this day our daily bread" in the Lord's Prayer seems to drive the choice of most English translators. A more literal reading of "give us our necessary bread every day" seems to be becoming more common among translators. The translation notes in the NetBible summarize this (https://netbible.org/bible/Matthew+6): Matt 6:11 in the NetBible is "Give us today our daily bread" Or “Give us bread today for the coming day,” or “Give us today the bread we need for today.” and the translation note is: the term ἐπιούσιος (epiousios) does not occur outside of early Christian literature (other occurrences are in Luke 11:3 and Didache 8:2), so its meaning is difficult to determine. Various suggestions include “daily,” “the coming day,” and “for existence.” See BDAG 376-77 s.v.; L&N 67:183, 206.

These observations and questions strike at a few issues many Christians have wrestled with for a long time. If sin is defined exclusively as breaking rules, then it perhaps does seem extreme that eating a fruit caused all this and merited capital punishment. However, if sin is seen too as a contagion of a lethal virus with a 100% mortality rate and 100% infection rate upon contact, it is different. The virus infects all of us, mutates, gets worse and shows up in different forms, and affects some more than others. Death is a consequence of sin. One thing worse than the evil in our temporal world is the same evil unleashed in eternity with immortality. The primary issue is the coming into existence of a sin nature in humans which corrupts us, makes it impossible for us to be in complete control of ourselves, and causes us to be corrupted broken versions of the individuals God intends for us to be. Individual acts of sin flow out of the sin nature. We cannot fix this on our own but require the atoning work of Christ to become new creations in Christ. I'm going to stop with that and not get into the unending debate over freewill and divine sovereignty about the potential inevitability of original sin, etc. The question of what passages in scripture to take literally and which to take figuratively has led to much debate among Christians. There are many nuances but I'm going to risk an oversimplification of what I see as the main points. There are actually two questions involved with this. The first is whether or not the Bible is reliable and can be trusted on vital matters such as the person of Jesus Christ, His atoning work, resurrection, and the work of the Holy Spirit. The second is which passages are to be taken literally and which figuratively or symbolically. Some Christians treat these questions as essentially one and the same and others treat them separately. This can turn into debates over if a "real" Christian has to believe the earth is 6000 years old or what the shape of the earth is. Some Christians make literalness on all issues an all or nothing proposition that one either believes all of the Bible or none of the Bible. Other Christians do not. My observation is that the majority of evangelicals take Adam and Eve to be actual individuals. This includes Christians who believe the earth is 6000 years old and those who think it could be much older. Most evangelicals look at the NT treating Adam and Eve as actual individuals and go with that.

The term illeism is sometimes used to describe referring to oneself in the 3rd person. It's been long noted in scripture. In the OT, God often referred to Himself in the 3rd person. Jesus referred to himself as the "son of man". Paul's discourse in II Corinthians 12 about a man caught up into heaven is considered by a number of scholars to be self-referential. Outside of the Bible, it is a somewhat common rhetorical and literary method. Some writers choose 3rd person to avoid constantly interjecting I and me everywhere. It takes the reader's attention to what is being talked about rather than the author's direct involvement. I've read and heard various personal testimonies where someone wrote or talked about a topic in the 3rd person and then revealed it was about themselves at the end. One example is a speaker I heard who was talking about bullying in school. He started off talking about the out of place kid and the various things others did to that kid. Then at the end, he revealed he was talking about himself. He didn't want people focused on feeling sorry for him. He wanted them focused on the acts and tragedy of bullying which he described in the 3rd person and then by shifting to 1st person at the end, he added much more authority to his presentation. The author of John's Gospel likely didn't want to draw attention to himself but rather to what he'd seen Jesus do only bringing himself in at the end to point out everything prior was directly witnessed rather than hearsay. My understanding is that the scholarly debate over the authorship of the Johannine books (Gospel of John, 3 epistles of John, and Revelation) is usually focused on the testimony of early church fathers and other such historical evidence as well as internal information in the book rather than the overall choice of 1st or 3rd person for the majority of the book. If someone is looking for complete and absolute proof of authorship, it doesn't exist. However, as far as I can tell, the evidence seems consistent with John the son of Zebedee being either the direct author or the source of the material.

A part of this debate seems to be that some people like art and some people do not like art. Some people look at a picture and only see what it is. Other people look at a picture and see what it can represent. Some people comfortably communicate via imagery and symbols whereas others prefer clearly stated words. Write a poem or hymn expressing your feelings toward God using symbolism of any sort and there will probably be someone who condemns it for not being theologically accurate enough. There will be some who are moved and inspired by the beauty of such expression and others who are appalled at the lack of precision and ambiguity. Some people enjoy reading fantasy books and see ideas and concepts which give them things to meditate on and learn from. Other people dislike reading fantasy books because they are not realistic and it seems pointless to read such things. From what I can tell, that is much of what I'm seeing on this thread. Some Christians look at Harry Potter and see something that is not literally real expressing such themes as friendship and courage so they have little problem with it. Some Christians look at Harry Potter and see a concrete promotion of the occult and have great concern over it.

The vast majority of dreams are just our brain restoring chemical balance while we sleep. They can sometimes reflect our mental state. For example, for a time I was much too concerned with my job and under much stress. My dreams during this time almost always consisted of images from my day at work. After I stopped worrying about work so much, my dreams went back to typical randomness. One thing to note about spiritual or prophetic dreams is that they were rare occurrences in an individual's life. Joseph (OT) had 2 such dreams, not hundreds. Abimelech had one. Joseph (NT) only had a few and at times when he needed to make an important decision and those were quite explicit and impossible to miss. Most of our dreams are relatively random and perhaps reflect something going on in our lives. Dreams of direction from God are relatively rare and those receiving them know there is something very different about those dreams. I don't think there is much to understand in dreams except that recurring patterns or dreams might give some insight into things that deeply worry us. The rare dreams from God will also in some manner include God's guidance for understanding them. Both Joseph (OT) and Daniel when interpreting dreams for rulers said that the interpretations come from God.

As I recall from previous posts, your older brother has been more or less supporting the family for many months? His 1 BR place with a sister, parents, and brother living there as well as relatives next door who are constantly coming over and a baby due to arrive at any time? Perhaps he's frustrated, burned out, feels unappreciated, and just wants to be left alone? Maybe he feels like everyone has been mooching off of him and he's getting sick of it? Your older brother being endlessly swamped by relatives with no escape, your parents losing their home and unemployment issues, as I recall your grandmother and aunt and her kids living next door, your situation... it sounds like everyone is struggling with some heavy burdens and getting frustrated with each other and getting on each other's nerves to a great extent.

I've taken such imagery as bride and body as being allegorical to explain aspects of the collection of all those who are saved in the same way as such imagery as lamb, lion, bread of life, rock, way, door, and other such things are descriptions of aspects of who Jesus is.

The key belief of Christians is that there is a Creator. If there is no Creator, the main question about such things is *how* did things come to be. If there is no Creator, the question *why* did things come to be has no meaning. It is the Christian view that the question of *why* we exist is ultimately much more important that *how* we came to exist. The big difference among evangelical Christians on these types of issues is how important the details of creation are to them. For some Christians, having scientific proof that Genesis 1 is literally accurate as 6 days of creation about 6000 years ago is a critical matter of faith in the trustworthiness of scripture. For them, the starting point is scripture and anything that contradicts that must be in error somehow. Some of those with this view don't believe it is possible for a Christian to believe in an old earth without rejecting scripture. Indeed, I've heard some say it is impossible to believe in an old earth and be a Christian. For other Christians, this is not a big deal since symbolism is used all the time in scripture. They comfortably say Jesus is a lamb, a lion, the Word, a root, bread of life, a light, a rock, the door, the vine, and cornerstone without actually thinking Jesus is a literal lamb, lion, or rock. The Bible talks in a literal way about angels at the 4 corners of the earth in Rev 7:1 which few Christians would consider essential to believe as being a literal description of the earth having 4 physical corners.