Poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

If there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy.

-- Francis Bacon

Paul retains the basic end of the world message of Matthew's Jesus in the phrase "before the time"

It's just that there's been a slight shift forward in time to πρὸ καιροῦ, so that, unfortunately, Paul now ends up in agreement with the devils of Matthew 8 that their torment began before it should have, because the coming of the end of the world was then and still is "not yet" but is even now still farther into the future.

Paul's apocalyptic eschatology is thus an attenuated version of Jesus' belief in the imminent final judgment.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

-- I Corinthians 4:5 

You don't believe Jesus came to bring the end of the world and the final judgment? Neither did the devils.

They said he came πρὸ καιροῦ:

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

-- Matthew 8:28f.

In this culture of death, we sat still for 3,302 abortions every day for 20 years, so the libertarian shoulder-shrug over SARS-CoV-2 isn't surprising

The Germans acquiesced to a murderous Hitler, the Russians to a murderous Stalin, the Chinese to a murderous Mao, the Americans to The Murderous Individual.

Fame is a thing beyond us

What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath,

a thing beyond us, ev'n before our death:

Just what you hear, you have.

-- Alexander Pope

Monastic rules, the second law of thermodynamics, and post-modernism

Homer, Martin Luther, and the wisdom of beer

Just kidding.

Ariel Sabar strikes again in a good, long read about a con allegedly perpetrated by an academic and other shady characters against the Green family of Hobby Lobby fame and their Museum of the Bible

A Biblical Mystery at Oxford:

'In June 2019, Michael Holmes, who replaced Pattengale as the director of the scholars initiative, flew to London to meet with leaders of the Egypt Exploration Society, who remained skeptical that Obbink, whatever his other shortcomings, might have sold Oxyrhynchus papyri.

'Over lunch at a private club, Holmes pulled out a purchase agreement between Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Dirk Obbink. Co-signed by the Oxford professor on February 4, 2013, it showed that Obbink had sold the company not just the Mark papyrus, but also fragments of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. In the contract, Obbink describes the manuscripts as his personal property, vows to “ship/hand carry” them from “Oxford Ancient,” and dates all four to a historically unprecedented “circa 100 AD,” making each a one-of-a-kind worth millions.

'When EES officials saw the contract, Holmes told me, “any uncertainties they had evaporated very quickly.” They banned Obbink from the collection.'

 

His prattling tongue

His tongue, his prattling tongue,

had chang'd him quite

To sooty blackness, from the purest white.

-- Joseph Addison

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity ... it defileth the whole body ... it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

-- James 3:6, 8 

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 

-- Matthew 5:37

Translation is not a science, but an art

This selected piece, which you translate,

Foretells your studies may communicate,

From darker dialect of a strange land,

Wisdom that here th' unlearn'd shall understand.

-- William D’Avenant (1606-1668)

According to Luke's Jesus, the abundant life does not consist in the abundance of possessions

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly [περισσὸν].

-- John 10:10

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance [περισσεύειν] of the things which he possesseth.

-- Luke 12:15

Everyone has their hand out, everyone wants a bailout, everyone wants a piece of the action, including the nation's clergy

America as I've always known it is dead. Well and truly dead.

Relief Funds Should Benefit Clergy, Too:

Clergy can, and must, receive CARES Act funds.

Fie, foh and fumme, we mark the birth of an Englishman

Childe Rowland to the darke Tower came, His word was still, fie, foh, and fumme, I smell the blood of a Brittish man.

-- Edgar in William Shakespeare's King Lear, Act III, Scene IV

Libertarianism is incapable of even responding to a pandemic

Because libertarianism cares nothing for the πᾶν, only for the deme of one, the self.

For this reason it appears to others that libertarians even want the ill among the πᾶν to die, who would have died anyway, they say. Who wouldn't have died anyway, of course, but for the pandemic.

The libertarians are the most loathsome members of our society, as were the dog philosophers of old.

A coronavirus victim's prayer

If, while this wearied flesh draws fleeting breath,

Not satisfy'd with life, afraid of death,

It hap'ly be thy will, that I should know

Glimpse of delight, or pause from anxious woe;

From now, from instant now, great Sire, dispel

The clouds that press my soul.

-- Matthew Prior, "poet by accident" (1664-1721)

Palm Sunday in Mark ended as an anticlimactic reconnoitering event without a Temple cleansing until the morrow

And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve. 

-- Mark 11:11

On the incoherence of Matthew's Gospel on forgiveness by the Son of Man

The triple tradition contains the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum at Matthew 9:1ff. (Mark 2:1ff., Luke 5:17ff.).

And at Matthew 9:6 we have 

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power ["authority"] on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

Jesus performs the healing, it is said, to demonstrate his authority to forgive sins in answer to the charge of blasphemy, since only God can forgive sins it is believed. But this explanation of blasphemy is unstated in Matthew, unlike Mark 2:7 and Luke 5:21.

Matthew, or his editor, has trimmed the content just this little bit, doubtlessly because he feels the difficulty involved because of what he has Jesus say on the subject just previously in the Sermon on the Mount. This "solution" is clumsy and incomplete, and still hands us here a Jesus with authority to forgive sins, as if forgiveness were only God's prerogative.

But Matthew's Jesus doesn't really believe that. He believes it is every man's prerogative, nay, obligation. Matthew's Jesus believes forgiveness is the sine qua non of discipleship. And if the obligation, then it must be effectual.

After this manner therefore pray ye ... forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. ...
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

-- Matthew 6:9ff.  

One need hardly mention here how this is consistent with the keys of the kingdom duties of the "church" in Matthew 16 and 18 in binding and loosing sins and trespasses, on which see on those passages.

Clearly the triple tradition introduces a foreign conception at this point in Matthew. It is concerned with the Christ of faith, not with the Jesus of history, with the divine Jesus who was a sacrifice for sins, not with the eschatological prophet of repentance. Hence the introduction of miracles to validate the new narrative.

As such the triple tradition's understanding of Son of Man is also suspect, suffering as it is from reinterpretation in conformity with the post-resurrection rationalization of Jesus' death. The title has already lost touch with what its owner meant by it and is starting to signify something else. The Son of Man in Jesus' mind is a military figure who is suddenly coming with the divine armies of God for judgment, at which time it will be too late for forgiveness. Hence the urgency of forgiveness now. One cannot wait for someone else to win it and bestow it. The disciple must bestow it himself, or be lost with the many following the broad path to destruction.

Coronavirus catastrophe exposes fraudulent Christianity at the heart of Trumpism: Love of money is the root of all libertarianism, more important than life itself

Texas lt. gov.: Grandparents 'don't want the whole country to be sacrificed' amid coronavirus closures:

“You’re basically saying that this disease could take your life but that’s not the scariest thing to you. There’s something that would be worse than dying,” Carlson said. “If I get sick, I’ll go and try to get better, but if I don’t, I don’t, and I’m not trying to think of any kind of morbid way, Tucker, I’m just saying that we’ve got a choice here and we’re going to be in a total collapse, recession, depression, collapse in our society if this goes on another several months, there won’t be any jobs to come back to for many people,” he said. ... “But the point is, our biggest gift we give to our country and our children and our grandchildren is the legacy of our country." 

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 

-- I Timothy 6:8ff.

A word to the wise, if there are any left: The spring breakers in Florida are calling the coronavirus the "boomer remover"

Same as it ever was, I reckon, but still.  So be on your guard out there.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

-- II Timothy 3:1ff.

"Clerics in Iran hung a Quran high on power lines so that it could block and prevent Coronavirus from entering the area"

Seen here.

Very superstitious, wash your face and hands,

Rid me of the problem, do all that you can,

Keep me in a daydream, keep me goin' strong,

You don't wanna save me, sad is my song.

-- Stevie Wonder, Superstition, 1972