Luke omits in his version of the Olivet Discourse from Mark and Matthew the coming of false Christs who do signs and wonders

 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs [σημεῖα] and wonders [τέρατα]; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 

-- Matthew 24:24

For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.  

-- Mark 13:22

As detailed below, Luke positively values the signs and wonders of the apostolic age. He certainly doesn't want a Jesus who throws shade on them, especially since it is really "the holy child Jesus" by whose name the signs and wonders are done.

And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:  

-- Acts 2:19

Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles [δυνάμεσιν] and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: 

-- Acts 2:22

And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.  

-- Acts 2:43

And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.

-- Acts 4:29f.

And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch.  

-- Acts 5:12

And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles [signs] among the people. 

-- Acts 6:8

He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.  

-- Acts 7:36

Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. 

-- Acts 14:3

Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles [signs] and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.  

-- Acts 15:12

Luke's freedom in eliding entirely the "false Christs" line at a minimum shows that the apocalyptic tradition narrated in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 is not yet fixed in the evangelists' own time as they struggled to reimagine and repurpose the (failed) eschatological material of the earlier time of the historical Jesus which lies behind it.

It has long been recognized that this apocalyptic material is a series of independent units more or less successfully woven together into a "composite discourse", but it is a "tangled skein", some elements of which might be editorial by the evangelists, some pre-existing apocalyptic either Jewish or Jewish Christian, some authentically dominical, et cetera. So Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, London 2nd edition, 1966, 1977, pp. 498ff., who considers Matthew a later version of Mark, but Luke, who has "little linguistic agreement with Mk.", to be a stand alone witness presenting material from "independent" sources who must be reckoned with for the development of apocalyptic but often is not.

As Taylor recognizes, Mark's vocabulary in 13:21f. has the "later ring" of "primitive Christianity" about it. It is an apocalyptic outlook now "strange to the mind of Jesus". So it would not be odd then for Luke to exclude it, concerned as he self-consciously is to lay out his history more accurately than have other evangelists.

What we have in these apocalyptic narratives, including Luke's, is revisionism at work.

The "false Christs" idea reflects later developments, a later Christianity on the way from a Judaism which had its own false prophets, to a later Pauline world populated also by a false gospel (II Cor. 11:4; Gal. 1:6), false apostles (II Cor. 11:13), false angels (II Cor. 11:14), the son of perdition (II Thes. 2:3), and ultimately the Antichrist(s) of I and II John.

The historical Jesus, imagining the imminent end of the world in his own lifetime, would never have imagined such developments by definition.

But Luke himself hasn't thought of such things, of course, nor about the implications for either his Gospel or his Apostle (Acts, primarily about Paul). Luke's aim is to present the signs and wonders characteristic of the early and middle Pauline period as proof of his Gospel.

What is also often not considered enough is that the false Christs language of Matthew 24 and Mark 13 might actually be explicit anti-Pauline propaganda, in which case this calumny might represent the particular trigger, among other deficiencies, which motivated Luke to compose his definitive two-volume work in defense of the real Jesus and his hero Paul as he understands them, in order that his patron Theophilus "may know the certainty of those things" in which he was instructed (Luke 1:4).

Can you remember the last time a professor was fired for saying Jesus didn't die for our sins?

 Me either.

A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job.

Samuel Johnson was evidently a January 6th kind of Twelfth Nighter, not a January 5th

 

 

Twelfth Night, or What You Will (to give the play its full title) was probably commissioned for performance as part of the Twelfth Night celebrations held by Queen Elizabeth I at Whitehall Palace on 6 January 1601 to mark the end of the embassy of the Italian diplomat, the Duke of Orsino. It was again performed at Court on Easter Monday in 1618 and on Candlemas night in 1623.     

More.

And more.

Rod Dreher on the naive progressivism of Joseph Ratzinger, the now deceased Pope Benedict XVI

 Here: 

In other words, his progressivism consisted of wanting to make Catholic orthodoxy comprehensible to the modern world -- not in wanting to overturn those orthodoxies! The book goes on to talk about his shock in the years immediately following the Council to see how people within the Church used "the spirit of Vatican II" as a pretext to dismantle Catholicism. Ratzinger, a good-hearted soul who expected the best from others, had been terribly naive. 

It wasn't just Ratzinger, however.

The same phenomenon occurred in Protestantism, and in politics.

President Ronald Reagan, for example, had campaigned in the 1970s on libertarian economic orthodoxies, in particular on cutting ordinary income tax rates because he believed people were better judges of what to do with their money than was government. He won in landslides.

But as Ratzinger never anticipated how nefarious forces in the church would use their freedom to indulge sinful human nature, Reagan never anticipated how rich people and corporations would use their tax savings windfalls to invest abroad instead of in the United States, shipping millions of formerly good middle class jobs abroad to cheaper labor markets, hollowing out the country and growing thereby even more fabulously rich in the process.

Underestimating sinful human nature has been the story of our times.

 

 

 

 

Nostradamus was Jewish after all, so it's not surprising that popular Jewish media would promote the opportunistic astrologer

 Nostradamus predictions for '23: Great war, financial ruin, more...

 

Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first time in print Latinising his name to Nostradamus. He was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he decided to write one or more annually. ...

By 1566, Nostradamus' gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years and made movement very difficult, turned into edema. In late June he summoned his lawyer to draw up an extensive will bequeathing his property plus 3,444 crowns (around US$300,000 today), minus a few debts, to his wife pending her remarriage, in trust for her sons pending their twenty-fifth birthdays and her daughters pending their marriages.     

More.

It's always about how the fool and his money soon are parted one from the other.

Mary the mother of Jesus attempted a family intervention

 

A plot for His assassination was secretly on foot. And at this juncture the incident of my text, which we owe to Mark alone of the Evangelists, occurs. Christ’s friends, apparently the members of His own family--sad to say, as would appear from the context, including His mother--came with a kindly design to rescue their misguided kinsman from danger, and laying hands upon Him, to carry Him off to some safe restraint in Nazareth, where He might indulge His delusions without doing any harm to Himself. They wish to excuse His eccentricities on the ground that He is not quite responsible--scarcely Himself; and so to blunt the point of the more hostile explanation of the Pharisees that He is in league with Beelzebub.

Conceive of that! The Incarnate Wisdom shielded by friends from the accusation that He is a demoniac by the apology that He is a lunatic! . . . 

There is nothing that commonplace men hate like anything fresh and original. 

-- Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), Exposition on Mark 3:21

At Christmas thoughts do not naturally turn to Mary's crazy, problem child of the Gospel of Mark

Bart Ehrman, December 2014, here:

Mark does not narrate an account of Jesus’ birth. Mark never says a word about Jesus’ mother being a virgin. Mark does not presuppose that Jesus had an unusual birth of any kind. And in Mark (you don’t find this story in Matthew and Luke!!), Jesus’ mother does not seem to know that he is a divinely born son of God. On the contrary, she thinks he has gone out of his mind. Mark not only lacks a virgin birth story; it seems to presuppose that they [sic] never could have been a virgin birth. Or Mary would understand who Jesus is. But she does not.

It’s no wonder that when Matthew and Luke took over so many of the stories of Mark, they decided, both of them, *not* to take over Mark 3:20-21. They had completely different view of Jesus’ mother and his birth.

Gay man conducts online poll with a good number of queer respondents asking why they're leaving Christianity, finds LGBT discrimination is the main reason

I'm shocked, right?

But why does this get treated as legitimate by Real Clear Religion when it's obviously biased and skewed?

Why Are People Leaving Christianity?

Brandon Flanery, Baptist News Global

A brief history of feminism

 

When you go to church, the person sitting next to you is very likely to be just fine with same sex marriage

 

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

-- II Corinthians 6:17

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.  

-- Revelation 18:4

2.3 million Methodists expected to flee United Methodism by the end of 2023 over LGBT and become independent to avoid the fate of the Episcopalians

 Unsurprisingly, the liberal denominations of the old Mainline Protestant world are the fastest to decline. The Episcopal Church just announced that in 2021 it lost 56,314 members while attendance dropped 36 percent from 2020. Sixty-two congregations were permanently closed. Average worship dropped from 55 to 21 persons. Ninety percent of Episcopal churches have fewer than 100 attendees on Sunday. 

Many Methodist congregations seek to escape this grim fate. And who can blame them?

More.

Act like a man

 Acquit thee bravely, play the man;

Look not on pleasures as they come, but go:

Defer not the last virtue; life's poor span

Makes not an ell by trifling in thy woe.

-- George Herbert

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. 

 

-- I Corinthians 16:13

Jon D. Levenson thinks Yonatan Adler's thesis is very learned but problematic because Pentateuchal law is prescriptive and pre-Hellenistic

 Much more problematic, however, is Adler’s claim that before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals. This misses the fact that the law collections in the Pentateuch appear within a framework of covenant, with their particular norms thus revalorized as covenantal stipulations. And covenantal stipulations are very much intended to be obeyed.

Thus, Deuteronomy, the book most imbued with the conceptions and idioms of covenant, time and again insists that its laws be carefully practiced and continually kept in mind. It promises blessings to those who heed that counsel and curses to those who violate it, proving faithless to the covenant. “For the word is very close to you,” reads the conclusion to one of its most memorable exhortations, “in your mouth and in your heart to practice it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). This was written long before anyone ever heard of Ptolemy II or the Hasmoneans.

More.

Like brute beasts we travel with the herd

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The good we love for its own sake we obey

 It is not imaginable that men will be brought to obey what they cannot esteem.

 

-- Robert South

There is a kind of good we love both for its own sake and for its consequences.

-- Plato, Republic II, 357b,c

Finally, some really good reporting on how American Puritanism became a feature of the political left

 . . . according to Rothman . . . there is “a popular mythology that long ago outlived its usefulness,” he said in a direct Twitter message to Tablet, which “postulates that the vestiges of prudish American puritanism are exclusive to the political right.” Instead, he said, “with the policing and enforcement of moral frameworks again becoming a feature of the left, America’s vestigial puritanism is assuming a form that is far more historically familiar.” ...

“Today,” Rothman said in his message to Tablet, “as the left gravitates away from liberalism and toward progressivism, they are assuming many of progressivism’s conceits—chief among them, a messianic utopianism that views everything, even life’s most banal pleasures, through the prism of political activism.”

More.

The many are trusting, lazy-minded followers

 Most take things upon trust, and misemploy their assent by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates of others.

-- John Locke

Michael Gerson has died

 

“Fate may do what it wants,” he said. “But this much is settled. In our right minds, we know that love is at the heart of all things."     

Obituary here.

You shall know them by their shrugging

 There is a kind of sluggish resignation, as well as poorness and degeneracy of spirit, in a state of slavery.

-- Joseph Addison

The road to ruin

 The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift

Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) this summer rejected by 75% a statement condemning political violence

Reported here :

Elders on the debate floor objected to the resolution. One elder speaking against the statement said that without political violence, the Protestant Reformation and American Revolution wouldn’t have happened. “We’d all still be genuflecting and using holy water,” he said. 

The squeamish, elitist minority claims in response that “It’s not uncommon for evangelicals to not be too concerned whether there is historical pedigree to something they think is biblical.”

Yeah right, there's no historical pedigree WHATSOEVER, lol:  

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Yeah, it's called The New Testament, but the rabbi has his own book to sell

 

What Jews Don't Know About Christianity Could Fill a Book

Jeffrey Salkin, RNS

All-hallown eve: Welcome to the 505th anniversary of the original pinned tweet

 

We are the antiques

 We have a mistaken apprehension of antiquity,

calling that so, which in truth is the world's nonage.

-- Joseph Glanvill

They're not innocents: The poets write what they know

 Folly and vice are easy to describe,

The common subjects of our scribbling tribe.

 

-- Wentworth Dillon

 

 

Why you are here

 The beams of light had been in vain display'd,

Had not the eye been fit for vision made;

In vain the author had the eye prepar'd

With so much skill, had not the light appear'd.

-- Richard Blackmore (1654-1729)

COVID-19 picked-off two already ailing Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod institutions of higher learning in New York and Oregon in 2020-2021

The Concordia University system must brace for yet another closure. Concordia College New York, a small, Lutheran liberal arts college in Bronxville, N.Y., will close this summer, it announced Thursday. ...

Concordia’s closure announcement leaves only six institutions in the Concordia University system. It began to shrink eight years ago, when Concordia University Ann Arbor was annexed by Concordia University Wisconsin in 2013. Five years later, Concordia College in Alabama, a historically Black college, closed due to falling enrollments and mounting debt. Concordia University in Portland, Ore., announced in February that it would close, citing a challenging and changing higher education landscape.

-- Inside Higher Ed, January 29, 2021 

For other college closings across the country since 2016, see here.

Vladimir Putin says the West is Satanic for rejecting moral norms

Putin says U.S. created nuclear PRECEDENT by bombing Japan and vows to 'smash' the 'satanic' West

Exhibit A, which you would never have seen in the popular press even 20 years ago:

 

When thoughts weigh heavy

 His pensive cheek upon his hand reclin'd,

And anxious thoughts revolving in his mind.

-- John Dryden

Locke against the right of primogeniture

 In scripture there is no such thing as an heir that was, by right of nature, to inherit all, exclusive of his brethren.

-- John Locke

Of verses sterling

 Beware of Latin authors all!

Nor think your verses sterling,

Though with a golden pen you scrawl,

And scribble in a berlin.

-- Jonathan Swift

All of Pope Francis' American appointments to cardinal have been the acolytes of a pervert, liar, and abuser of the highest order

It is disturbing that all of Francis’s American appointments to the College of Cardinals have been acolytes of Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC and a pervert, liar, and abuser par excellence. 

It's quite a bit more than disturbing . . . 

None of this is remotely Catholic.

Well, there it is.

Read it all, here.

US evangelicals are no longer orthodox Christians

56 percent of evangelical respondents affirmed that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam,” up from 42 percent in 2020.  

A surprising 73 percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”

60 percent of the evangelical survey respondents had some confusion about its third member, believing that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”

57 percent also agreed to the statement that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”  

More.

Masuccio Salernitano on the phony, immoral, infanticidal Franciscan and Dominican begging friars of 15th century Italy

  They cheat, steal, and fornicate, and when they are at the end of their resources, they set up as saints and work miracles . . . bring with them confederates who pretend to be blind or afflicted with some mortal disease, and after touching the hem of the monk's cowl, or the relics which he carries, are healed before the eyes of the multitude. All then shout 'Misericordia', the bells are rung, and the miracle is recorded in a solemn protocol. ... The nuns ... bring forth pretty little monks or else use means to hinder that result. And if anyone charges me with falsehood, let him search the nunneries well, and he will find there as many little bones as in Bethlehem at Herod's time. ... The best punishment for them would be for God to abolish Purgatory; they would then receive no more alms, and would be forced to go back to their spades.

 

 

-- Tommaso Guardati, aka Masuccio Salernitano (1410-1475), quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon, 1945), 283f.

On the self-importance of the poets

 

 True poets are the guardians of a state,

And when they fail, portend approaching fate.

-- Wentworth Dillon

Portents are a dime a dozen

 Every unwonted meteor is portentous, and some divine prognostick.

-- Joseph Glanvill

Rod Dreher, so-called most important Christian thinker of our age, differs little from the superstitious fear-peddlers of any previous age

 On this day twenty years ago, a shocking sign appeared in New York. ... I remember standing there at the edge of Ground Zero, looking at my watch, waiting for the minute when, one year earlier, the first plane struck the north tower. That was also to be the signal for the start of the memorial service at Ground Zero. At that moment -- at that precise moment -- a ferocious wind blew in from the same direction that the plane had taken. It was uncanny. There was a hurricane far offshore, and this was its outermost fringe. Still, the timing was eerie. ... When I emerged out onto the street a few minutes later, the wind had stopped. I don't know what time it ceased to blow, but I would bet it was when the last name was read. ...

 

 The phone rang. It was my journalist friend, slightly freaking out. "Come over," she said. I took off. At her apartment, she led me into her home office, and pointed to something hanging on a wall. It was a small American flag, almost paper-thin, and very old. Judging from the number of stars on its field, I would say from the Revolutionary War era. It was mounted and framed under glass.  ... On this day, however, when she returned from Ground Zero, she noticed that it had been torn right down the middle. ... Both of us were, and are, Christian. The significance of this sign was not lost on us. ... I immediately interpreted the torn flag as a sign that God had withdrawn his protection from America, in judgment.

 

The whole thing is here.

There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 

 

-- Mark 8:12

 

Somebody has to pay for those French oysters, and his son's college education.

 

Might as well be you.

The true king does much with little

 This small inheritance 

Contenteth me, and's worth a monarchy.

Sufficeth that I have maintains my state
And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2, Act 4, Scene 10

. . . and the two fishes divided he among them all. 

 

-- Mark 6:41

Snoring upon the flint

Weariness can snore upon the flint,

when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.
 

-- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene VI

Weary Jacob made stones for his pillows at Bethel

Progressive Walter Brueggemann offers not one text in the Bible which offers "a counter-position" friendly to homosexuality, let alone to bestiality, incest, or transgenderism

Because there aren't any.

 

 

 

 

The reason the Bible seems to speak “in one voice” concerning matters that pertain to LGBTQ persons is that the loud voices most often cite only one set of texts, to the determined disregard of the texts that offer a counter-position. ... The Bible contains all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love, mercy and justice. ... And where the Bible contradicts that news, as in the texts of rigor, these texts are to be seen as “beyond the pale” of gospel attentiveness.

More.

For Brueggemann all the following simply have to go, along with Romans 1:23ff. itself, because they are the enemy of the easy, welcoming gospel (which would strike St. Paul as quite the odious lie), even though there isn't any evidence that early Christianity reversed its antipathy for any of these perversions.

Make no mistake. There is no reason why the prohibitions against bestiality, incest, and transgenderism should stay when those against homosexuality must go.

Brueggemann should be made to answer that: 

 

Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.

-- Exodus 22:19

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 

-- Leviticus 18:22

And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:11

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:13

And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.

-- Leviticus 20:15

And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

-- Leviticus 20:16 

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

-- Deuteronomy 22:5

Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife; because he uncovereth his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:20

Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:21

Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:22

Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:23

 

Brueggemann ignores a bunch of texts himself which contradict his cherished catch-all counter-idea that "The Gospel, unlike the Bible, is unambiguous about God’s deep love for all peoples."

For Brueggemann it couldn't possibly be that Jesus was an eschatological prophet to Israel only (Matthew 10, 15), bringing good news to its lost sheep who were impoverished by the rich who have their reward (Luke 7), who preached impending divine judgment of his generation (Luke 11) and never imagined a future church but rather the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God out of heaven wherein The Twelve would sit on twelve thrones judging the new Israel (Matthew 19, Luke 22).

There's plenty of contradictory evidence against Brueggemann's easy gospel of "welcome", he just ignores it.

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. 

 

-- Matthew 7:13f.

Brueggemann ignores all the evidence because he has a different agenda, about a kingdom that is "never fully here" but is only becoming.

Perhaps the most succinct example of that ignorance is summed up in his twisted claim that "The burden of discipleship to Jesus is easy". The burden of Jesus is in fact quite specifically light because the disciple has no possessions weighing him down, impeding his escape through the narrow gate, and no social obligations of work and family either, all of which were renounced because they hold one back. 

No man can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that is his.

-- Luke 14:33

No one knows this Jesus anymore, not Paul himself, not today's church, and especially not Walter Brueggemann. 

Neocon speech writer for George W. Bush, Evangelical Michael Gerson is very angry with his brothers for not being angry, too

Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t?

The Trump movement is

inconsistent with Christianity by any orthodox measure. Yet the discontent, prejudices and delusions of religious conservatives helped swell the populist wave that lapped up on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that assault, Christian banners mixed with the iconography of white supremacy, in a manner that should have choked Christian participants with rage. But it didn’t.    

Is that disqualifying?

Like many of his fellow Christians, Gerson rejects the historical Jesus as eschatological prophet of the end of the world and instead believes in an unfolding, immanentized eschaton which realizes the universal rule of God through the church:

In the present age, [Jesus] insisted, the Kingdom of God would not be the product of Jewish nationalism. It would not arrive through militancy and violence, tactics that would contribute only to a cycle of suffering. Instead, God’s kingdom would grow silently, soul by soul, “among you” and “within you,” across every barrier of nation or race — in acts of justice, peacemaking, love, inclusion, meekness, humility and gentleness.       

Gerson's Trump critique is useful to the political objectives of Washington Post liberalism, but that liberalism all the same knows that his version of Christianity is nothing but a paper tiger, having co-opted its values long ago.

Maybe down deep Gerson knows this also.

He is a life-long sufferer of mental illness:

 

It would be odd for Jesus' opponents to say he wasn't yet fifty if he were actually only about thirty

 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 

-- John 8:57

Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli . . .. 

-- Luke 3:21ff.