Floods and Fallen Angels

Last week I purchased a massive book: 'Myths and Legends from the Ancient Near East'. I've been reading a myth or two every night before bed. 'A myth a day keeps the imagination at play'...

Anyway, I completed the section on Mesopotamian myths, which concluded with the Epic of Gilgamesh. There are at least three Mesopotamian flood myths pre-dating the Biblical story. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are thought to have flooded Mesopotamia sometime between 3200 and 2900 B.C.E.; the myths are the result of people trying to understand why it happened.

Sumerian 'Eridu Genesis' - c. 2300 B.C.E.

For an unspecified reason the gods became dissatisfied with humans and decided to destroy them. The gods gathered in their temple in the city of Shuruppak to discuss the plan. The god Enki secretly told Ziusudra, the priest-king of Ziusudra, about the plan and advised him to make a boat so that some life could survive. The flood happened, Ziusudra & Co. survived in the big boat, and the gods rewarded Ziusudra with immortality.

Akkadian 'Atrahasis' - c. 1600 B.C.E.

Humanity reproduced too much and made too much noise on earth. The gods were losing sleep over it. Ellil suggested a cull. The Divine Assembly agreed and first used disease, then drought, to reduce the human population. The starved humans resorted to cannibalism, and the god Ea felt sorry for them. He gave them some fish. Ellil got angry at this and suggested that all life be wiped out by a great flood. The gods agreed on it, but Ea still wanted humanity to survive. He secretly told Atrahasis to build a big boat so that some life could survive. The flood happened, and the gods looked upon their work - the floating corpses of men, women, children and animals - and despaired. They wept for seven days. The goddess Ninhursuga chastised the Divine Assembly for not properly discussing the decision. Atrahasis & Co. survived in the big boat. The gods decided to limit human population growth by making it so that babies would occasionally be stillborn, or die shortly after birth.

Epic of Gilgamesh 'Utnapishtim' - c. 1300-1000 B.C.E.

Humanity reproduced too much and made too much noise on earth. The gods were losing sleep over it. Enlil suggested a they wipe out humanity with a great flood. Ea visited Utnapishtim in a dream and gave in instructions to build a big boat to survive the coming flood. Utnapishtim & Co. build the boat. The flood happened. The gods looked upon their work and were terrified; they fled to the highest heaven. The goddess Ishtar chastised the Divine Assembly for not properly discussing the decision, and the gods wept. The boat settled on the mountain of Nisir. Utnapishtim let out a dove, but it returned to the boat, unable to find a resting place elsewhere. Then he let out a swallow, which also returned. Then he let out a raven, which found dry land and did not return. Utnapishtim prepared a huge sacrifice, and the gods gathered around it like flies. Enlil was barred from taking any of the sacrifice because he brought about the flood without properly thinking it through. The gods rewarded Utnapishtim with immortality.

Hebrew 'Noah' - 1000-600 B.C.E.

The sons of Elohim (God) mated with the daughters of man. The Nephilim were around in those days. Man was very wicked, and God regretted making them. He decided to wipe out all life. Yahweh-Elohim (God) told Noah to build a big boat to survive the flood. The flood happened and everything not on Noah's Ark was destroyed. Noah let out a raven, but it returned to the boat, unable to find a resting place elsewhere. Then he let out a dove, which returned with an olive branch. He let the dove out again, but this time it didn't return. The boat settled on the mountain of Ararat. The earth dried out, and Noah prepared a big sacrifice, burning a piece of every clean animal. God smelled the cooking meat and promised not to wipe out all life again using a flood, and put the rainbow in the sky as a reminder to himself not to commit genocide. Noah planted a vineyard and was a drunk for the rest of his life.

Discussion

There are some obvious similarities, but I find the differences more interesting. In the three polytheistic stories, there is the sense (in the latter two it's explicit) that gods realise that genocide is bad and there's probably a better solution to their problem (which in the latter two is lack of sleep caused by their being too many noisy humans on earth). The instigator of the flood is the villain. In the Biblical story, Yahweh-Elohim is both destroyer and saviour. Like the gods of Ziusudra and Utnapishtim, he does not try out any other methods first; he goes straight to a genocidal flood. We are told that man was wicked, but the nature of the wickedness is unspecified, and we are left wondering 'If it's man who's wicked, why do all the animals have to die as well?'. Unlike the other gods, Yahweh does not look upon the floating corpses and realise that Genocide Is Bad. Instead, he smells the pleasing aroma of the cooked meat in Noah's sacrifice and promises not to flood the world again, as though he had a craving for something but wasn't sure what: was it genocide or steak? Turns out it was steak. Sorry about the flood, guys. I won't do it again. Noah is not rewarded with immortality; instead, traumatised by the experience and terrified of God's mood-swings, Noah becomes a drunk. 

The lack of the, fairly obvious, moral message that Genocide Is Bad is emphasized by the content of subsequent Bible books. In Exodus, God commands Moses & Co. to exterminate all of the Promised Land's inhabitants when they arrive. In Numbers, God commands Moses & Co. to kill lots of people, and Moses berates his army officers for not executing all the women and children. A compromise is reached: the male children and non-virgin women are killed; the virgin females are kept as wives/sex slaves. In Deuteronomy, God commands the Israelites the exterminate the inhabitants of the Promised Land. In Joshua, the Israelites slaughter their way through the Promised Land, with God occasionally helping out by throwing rocks from the sky.

But ancient Jews were still bothered by God's seeming overreaction in the time of Noah. What made those times so much worse than now? Who were the 'sons of God'? Who were the Nephilim? A modern theory is that the 'sons of God' and the 'Nephilim' mentioned in the flood story are a remnant of Israel's earlier polytheistic mythology; the Nephilim are described as 'the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown'; the author was trying to quickly explain away the semi-divine humans that were still part of Israel's folk-culture during the transition from polytheism to monotheism.

Another explanation was that the 'sons of God' (sometimes translated as 'sons of the judges' or 'sons of the nobles') referred to the descendants of Seth, whereas the 'the daughters of men' were the descendants of Cain. Mixed marriages between God's chosen people (his metaphorical sons) and the scummy Cainites were the cause of the wickedness. This idea is reinforced by the frequency that God commands the Israelites not to marry anyone who isn't also an Israelite.

But there is one more theory about the 'sons of God': that they were fallen angels. This idea can be traced back to The Book of Enoch, which I imagine came about like this:

Sometime in the first century B.C.E., when Judea was ruled by Greeks and the Jews were having a bad time, a man looked at a shooting star and saw a falling angel, cast out of heaven for defying the will of God. This unknown man realised that fallen angels were responsible for evil. He rushed back home and read Genesis to try and find scriptural evidence of his revelation.

(This is an oversimplification: Enoch may be the works of multiple authors edited together)

He found the enigmatic Enoch verse:

Genesis 5:24 'Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.'

And the sons of God passages:

Genesis 6:1-2, 4 'When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.'

And he realised that the sons of God were fallen angels who had mated with human females to produce a race of giants, the Nephilim. He then wrote the Book of Enoch, which tells of how a band of angels led by Shemhazai lusted over human females; then they descended to Earth and slept around, producing a race of giants, the Nephilim, who had huge appetites. The giants consumed all of the humans' food; then they started eating humans, then each other. Meanwhile, the fallen angels taught the humans all sorts of things that God disapproves of.

God saw the evil committed by the fallen angels, the humans and the giants, and God decided to wipe out life with a flood. But first God decided to invite Enoch, a righteous man, up to heaven and transformed him into the angel Metatron, God's second-in-command.

The message to the suffering Jews was clear: God is still in heaven; he is not responsible for evil; he will get round to sorting out our problems.  

The idea of fallen angels was a popular one. It absolved, to an extent, God of blame for the evil in the world. Unknown authors wrote books expanding on the story of Adam and Eve: Satan the fallen angel was the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve; he had rebelled because he refused to bow to Adam; Satan now hated mankind; he proceeded to tempt (in the guise of an angel of light) and harass the first humans after their expulsion from Eden, and continues to plague humans to this day. 

The fallen angels, the soldiers of Satan, came to be in league with the demons. In Jewish tradition, demons were created at the end of the sixth day. God abandoned working on them as soon as the Sabbath began; he had made their spirits but not their bodies; he left them unfinished as a reminder to humanity to stop working as soon as the Sabbath began. The demons of Jewish tradition are not inherently evil; they occasionally possess humans because they are jealous of humanity's physical bodies, but they are just another of God's creatures. They are both good and evil, like the Hebrew God himself.

Paul the Apostle believed in fallen angels. He was a fan of The Book of Enoch, Genesis, and The Life of Adam and Eve. Paul's imagination combined the stories of these books, the beliefs the Jewish Christians he had been persecuting and his disapproval of the Mosaic Law to produce a novel theology. One day his mind snapped and he decided he had been prenatally chosen to preach the good news (gospel) that Jesus marked the end of God's covenant with Abraham and the necessity of following the Mosaic law. He was paranoid about fallen angels; he worried that they might lust after Christian women; he warned his followers not to trust angels. Reading his letters, I can't help but feel sorry for poor paranoid Paul.

As Christianity developed, so did the idea of fallen angels. In his City of God, Augustine described Satan and the fallen angels as beings that were created good but rebelled out of pride before the creation of man. God then decided to create humans to replace the fallen angels. Satan & Co, like all angels and humans, have free will. They rebelled out of free will and continue to do evil out of free will; they oppose the goodness of God. Their presence on earth is tolerated by God, who outsmarts the angels by using the evil they create to produce good. But he only does this after the evil has occurred. The Jewish demons didn't exist in gentile Christianity; demons and fallen angels were synonymous.

The Book Of Enoch, featuring Enoch as a prototype Jesus (a righteous man who cheats death and is taken to heaven to become God's second-in-command) had a mixed reputation within Christianity. Some churches suppressed it, others made it canonical.

In the first and second centuries C.E., the Jews attempted several times to rebel against Roman rule and declare Judea independent. This resulted in the Romans slaughtering, enslaving, and banishing tens of thousands of Jews. The majority of Jews ended up part of the diaspora, scattered across the Empire. The Rabbis compiled and edited the books of the Hebrew Bible (which Christians later took as the Old Testament) in the 2nd century so that the scattered Jews could still be linked by their culture and traditions, preserved in the written word. They thought fallen angels were a stupid idea. All books featuring fallen angels were rejected from the canon. To the rabbis, the belief in fallen angels could not be reconciled with the belief in the omnipotent Hebrew god who openly boasts about being responsible for evil as well as good, e.g.:

Isaiah 45:7 'I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.'

The Book of Job, generally considered to be the masterpiece of the Hebrew Bible (it is certainly the Bible book I recommend most of all), deals with the problem of evil, sort of. It is also Satan's main appearance in the Hebrew Bible. Job, the protagonist, is a righteous man who follows all God's laws and has a great life. God and his angels, including Satan, meet up. God asks Satan if he has seen how loyal Job is. Satan suggests that Job is only loyal because he has a great life. So God and Satan work together to ruin Job's life so God can prove a point.

Satan hires mercenaries to kill Job's animals and servants. God rains down fire from above and uses a great wind to blow down Job's house, killing all of Job's children. Satan gives Job loads of diseases, covering his entire body with sores.

Job sits in the ashes of his house for seven days, then has a long conversation with some of his friends in which they all try to understand why the fuck Job's life has just been ruined for seemingly no reason. They discuss whether Job may have secretly been guilty of something, maybe he deserved it really, and decide that maybe God has actually ruined Job's life for no obvious reason. Towards the end of their discussion, another character, Elihu, joins in and rebukes them, saying that God is wise and wouldn't have ruined his life for nothing, Job must deserve it.

God then appears in a whirlwind. He tells Elihu to shut up because he's totally wrong. He tells Job to shut up and stop questioning. God is the all-powerful creator and ruler of everything, and can do what he wants. You humans are tiny and do not understand my ways.

Attempting to read this in a Christian context, God being the Loving God of Love and Satan being the Evil Prince of Evil, is difficult. Why are God and Satan teaming up to ruin someone's life? WHAT IS THE GOD OF LOVE DOING?

In the Jewish context it makes sense. Satan is a servant of God who carries out divinely ordained wicked acts. These acts may be to test people's loyalty, to strengthen their character, to bring out their true nature, or for mysterious reasons which humans aren't capable of understanding. The Rabbis saw fallen angels as superfluous; when you already have a god who is often openly wicked, there is no need for a separate evil entity in opposition to God. This was a threat to monotheism; if God tolerated divine beings in opposition to him, was it because he could not defeat them? What was he waiting for? This was getting dangerously close to dualism. (Throughout history, dualist religions, who see the cosmos as a battleground between a good god and a bad god, have arisen out of Christianity.)

The combination of Jewish and Christian scriptures in Christian Bibles presents us with a morally complex God and a morally complex Satan; this finds its ultimate expression in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Satan is easily read as the brave hero rebelling against the cruel tyrant God. Even the loyalist angels comment on God's wickedness; the angel Gabriel refers to God as 'Heaven's awful monarch'.

A Rabbi has no problem when confronted with the famous Epicurean trilemma:

'If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.

If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.

If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?'

To a Rabbi, simple: God is not all-good. If it's an oversimplification to call a human being all-good or all-bad, it must be even more so to say that the same of the supreme transcendent being who created everything. Man was created in God's image; man is both good and evil, so is God. Claiming that God is all-good was deity denigration. Fallen angels were for pussies who didn't want to take monotheism seriously.

The Rabbis worked hard to suppress Enoch and the other fallen angel books. The idea was still popular among Jews when the Talmud, the other Jewish sacred scripture, was written. This process began around 200 C.E. and took a long time; the Talmud is freakin' huge (over 6,200 print pages, according to Wikipedia). The Talmud records all the exegetical interpretations of Jewish scriptures: what Rabbis agreed on, what they disagreed on and why, what was allegorical, what was literal. It was written because persecution of the Jews was on the increase; they were more and more scattered across the world. The Hebrew Bible was not enough to keep Jewish culture preserved.

The Talmud contains extended editions of Biblical tales, which were not to be taken literally. They were there to argue for a certain understanding, or to prove a point. One of the extended creation stories demonstrates how silly the Rabbis thought fallen angels were: before creating man, God asks his angels what they think of the idea. Some of them protest against the notion. God destroys them with his little finger. The violent Hebrew God would not let rebellious angels survive. And if humans could figure out that rebelling against an omnipotent God was not going to go well, then angels, greater and more intelligent than humans, should have been able to.

I find the Jewish view far more satisfying. The books of the Hebrew Bible were written over a about a thousand years. They attempt to imagine and understand what the supreme creator must be like; the authors lived in a primitive world and so had to conclude that the creator was a capricious tyrant with a long list of things that shouldn't be done. From the starting point of monotheism, the authors didn't have the luxury of believing in quarrelling gods. Everything was caused by the One True God. When people became ill after eating shellfish in the desert, it was a sign that God disapproved of eating shellfish. Social cohesion and good health were blessings from God; activities that promoted them were incorporated into the Mosaic Law (which developed over many years). The priests were doing God's work by promoting his law; they needed food, so God demanded animal sacrifices. Since the Israelites successfully slaughtered their way through the Promised Land, it must have been God's will. Does that make it right or good? No: it's just God's will. A great flood had occurred, and there had been a small band of survivors. The flood and the ark must both have been God's will. Did this make the flood right? Could there have been a better way that God could've solved everything? Maybe, but we puny humans can't say. God does what he wants.

The God of the Hebrew Bible is a more unpleasant character than the God of Christian scripture, but he is a more in-depth attempt to understand the will of the One True God responsible for all things. We understand cause and effect better nowadays; it sounds silly to attribute success and failure, prosperity and calamity, as rewards and punishments meted out by a Divine Dictator. Nevertheless, the books of the Hebrew Bible are powerful works of literature by people trying to make sense of the world they lived in.

Sources

Books:

Zealot by Reza Aslan

Fallen Angels by Bernard J. Bamberger

Omens of Millennium by Harold Bloom

Introduction to the Talmud by Moses Maimonides

A Gathering of Angels by Morris B. Margolies

Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels

Myths and Legends of the Ancient Near East edited by Rachel Storm

Christian Beginnings by Geza Vermes

Relevant earlier posts:

Bible: Adam & Eve, Extended Edition (includes the story about God destroying protesting angels with his little finger)

Bible: The Ten Generations, Extended Edition (includes parts of Enoch: the lustful angels and the transformation of Enoch into Metatron)
Pauline Gentiles and Jewish Christians

Bible: New Testament Timeline

The [Nine Billion] Names of God (about the explanations for God's multiple names and his occasional use of plurals)

Elohim vs Yahweh (about the theory that the Biblical flood story was originally polytheistic)

Torah Documentary Hypothesis (about the theory that the Torah is composed of multiple documents edited together)

Review: Paradise Lost and Regained by John Milton

New Testament: Pauline Gentiles and Jewish Christians

Saul was a devout Jew, a Pharisee who followed the Laws of Moses and persecuted the Jewish Christians, the followers of the crucified Jesus and his apostles. The Jews thought Jesus was just another false Messiah: he had been crucified; Israel had not been restored to glory; Deuteronomy 21:23 told the Jews that a hanged man was the accursed of God, not the Messiah. While devout, Saul was not a fan of the law: he thought it made people vulnerable to temptation by informing them about what was sinful. If the law wasn't there, he believed he wouldn't have been tempted to sin. He felt enslaved to the law.

But then Saul had his revelation. Jesus had died to rid man of sin. He had taken on the sins of the world, from Adam's fall to the present day, to redeem mankind so that humans might gain eternal life. Jesus was the end of God's covenant with Abraham; the testing of Abraham and the binding of Isaac was God ensuring that a descendent of Abraham would be a willing sacrifice to redeem mankind. By willingly taking the world's sin to death, Jesus had regained for humanity the perfect state lost by Adam & Eve. Through Adam's life we gained death; through Jesus' death we gain eternal life. Jesus' resurrection marked the beginning of the end of this world; soon he would return and take the faithful to the clouds. The Law of Moses no longer mattered: it had been put in place by angels to ensure the survival of Abraham's lineage until the coming of Jesus. Only faith, and focussing not on the material world but on the unseen world to come, mattered now. Saul, who changed his name to Paul, had been prenatally chosen by God to preach this good news.

Saul receives his revelation.

Paul's teachings were not well received by Jews or Jewish Christians. They thought him insane; God dictated the laws directly to Moses; God says over twenty times in the Torah that his laws are supposed to be followed forever; 'Are they saying that any of Mosaic laws are no longer necessary?' was one of the first questions a Jew was supposed to ask when trying to determine whether someone was a false prophet. Unpopular with the Jews, Paul turned to the non-Jews: the Gentiles of the Roman Empire.

Many Gentiles, unfamiliar with Jewish scripture or traditions, were impressed by Paul's teachings. He travelled the Empire, founding churches across Europe and Asia. His followers spread the teachings further. He amassed quite a following amongst the Gentiles, and this irritated the pagan authorities: his teachings denied the existence of the gods of Rome; his followers refused to worship them. This was atheism, and it was not on.

Called heretics by Jews (including the Jewish Christians) and atheists by pagans, Paul's Christians had a tough time. They were beaten, ostracised, imprisoned, tortured, stoned, whipped, and more. But they continued to spread the word, and knew to keep to their own communities as much as possible, living quietly, awaiting the imminent return of Jesus at the End of Time.

After 17 years of trying to stop him preaching, the Jewish Christians made an alliance with Paul's churches. They accepted that Paul had been sent to preach to the Gentiles, but saw his teachings as an intermediary step for Gentiles to become true Christians: in order for them to become true Christians, true followers of the Jewish Jesus, they needed to become Jewish. The Jewish Christians, whose beliefs were based on the teachings of the the apostles who had hung around with Jesus while he was alive, thought that Paul's Gentile Christians needed to follow the Mosaic law and be circumcised.

This angered Paul. The Jewish Christians, led by Peter (Jesus' favourite apostle) and James (Jesus' brother), saw Jesus as the Jewish Messianic prophet who would restore Israel to glory and fix the universe when he returned from Heaven. To Paul, God's favouritism of the Jews had ended with Jesus' death; the old covenant with the children of Israel was over: now there was a new covenant, a reboot. Jesus would be coming back, but he wouldn't be judging people based on observance to the Mosaic law: he would judge primarily on whether people had acknowledged his sacrifice for their sins. The Jewish Christians just didn't get this.

The popularity of Pauline Christianity among Gentiles continued to grow. Paul was a busy chap. Tradition has it that Paul went to Rome after writing his final letter (Romans) and died there, along with Peter, after Nero decided it would be a great idea to blame the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome and kill loads of them. Paul's teachings continued to spread, and developed into the Trinitarian doctrine that became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The Jewish Christians, on the other hand, decreased in numbers. During the Jewish Revolt, an attempt to declare Judea independent of Roman rule, the Romans slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews and destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem. Roman Anti-Semitism increased; the Jews were not popular. The Gentile Christians saw the destruction of the Temple as God's rejection of the Jewish people, and confirmation that his covenant with them was over. The Gentile Christians were God's favourites now. After another failed revolt by the Jews, the Romans were sick of Jewish rebellions. They raised Jerusalem to the ground and slaughtered their way through Judea. Most of the Jews joined the diaspora, scattered across the Empire. Judea was renamed Palestine.

Some Jewish Christians survived. Their doctrine changed over the centuries. Jesus was no longer seen as the final prophet preceding the apocalypse; maybe he hadn't even been crucified; his teachings had been lost in the turmoil of time.

Along came the Prophet Muhammad.

Islam spread and supplanted the Christian churches of the East. Christianity in the West, Islam in the East. The conflict between the Pauline and Jewish visions of Jesus had returned with a vengeance.

Sources
Zealot by Reza Aslan
Omens of Millennium by Harold Bloom
Introduction to the Talmud by Moses Maimonides
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans by Paul the Apostle
Christian Beginnings by Geza Vermes

New Testament: 2 Corinthians

Dear Corinthians,

Blessed be God of all comfort, who comforts us is our affliction so that we may comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which we are comforted by God. We share in Christ's sufferings; through Christ we share comfort also. If you suffer, it is for your salvation and comfort; if you are comforted, it is for your comfort.

I want you to be aware of what happened to us in Asia. We were burdened beyond our strength; we despaired of life itself; we felt we had received the sentence of death. But that was all to make us not rely on ourselves to but rely on God alone. He delivered us from deadly peril, and we hope that he will deliver us again.

I wanted to visit you on my way from Macedonia, but I have changed my mind.

If anyone has caused pain, he has caused it to all of you. This is punishment enough; you should forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Reaffirm your love for him.

I went to Troas and Titus wasn't there, so I left and went to Macedonia.

We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and those who are perishing; to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life. We are not peddlers of God's word, but men of sincerity commissioned by God.

Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who made us ministers of a new covenant. A covenant not of letters but of the spirit; the letter kills, the spirit gives life.

Now if the ministry of Death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face, will not the new ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? If there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it! If what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory!

We do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God's word. If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of Christ!

This treasure, the light of the gospel, we have in jars of clay to show that the power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus be manifested in our bodies.

So do not lose heart. Our outer self is wasting away, but out inner self is being renewed each day. This light affliction is preparing us for eternal glory beyond comparison. Look not to the things that are seen but to do the things unseen; seen things are transient; the unseen is eternal.

If our earthly home is to be destroyed, we have an eternal building waiting for us in the heavens. In our earthly home we groan, longing to be in our heavenly dwelling. We are of good courage. We would rather be away from this body and be with God. We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: the one died for all, therefore all have died; he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but live for him who for their sake died and was raised. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old passed away; behold, the new has come! Through Christ God reconciled the world to himself, not counting their trespasses, and trusting us as his messengers! We are the ambassadors for Christ; God makes his appeal through us.

We put no fault in anyone's way, but commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech and the power of God; with weapons of righteousness; through honour and dishonour, through slander and praise. We are treated as imposters, but are true; as sorrowful, but are rejoicing; as poor, but making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit.

When we went to Macedonia, our hearts had no rest, but God comforted us through Titus. If my last letter made you grieve, I do not regret it (although I did regret it for a little while). Rejoice for you were grieved into repenting! You felt godly grief! Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief leads to death. See what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you!

We rejoiced with Titus; his affection for you is greater than ours, for he remembers your obedience, how you received him with fear and trembling!

The churches of Macedonia were very generous. They gave according to and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging to take part in the relief of the saints. Now I know it is superfluous for me to write about being generous; I know your readiness, but I decided to send some brothers to you to make sure you're ready.

My point is: whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion; God loves a cheerful giver.

I beg that when I am with you again I will not have to show boldness as I must when dealing with those who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. We walk in the flesh, but we are not waging war according to the flesh. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.

Bear with me in a little foolishness! I am afraid that as Eve was deceived by the serpent, your thoughts will be led away from Christ. If someone proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, you put up with it readily enough. I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these 'super-apostles', even if my public-speaking skills aren't as great. I make up for this with knowledge.

Maybe I committed a sin by preaching to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them. What I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claims of those who like to claim that they work on the same terms as us. Such men are false apostles, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ! And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. It is no surprise if his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds!

Are they Hebrew? So am I.
Are they Israelite? So am I.
Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I.
Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one - I am talking like a madman! - with greater labours, more imprisonments, countless beatings, and often near death.

Five times I have received 39 lashes from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and day I was adrift at sea. On many journeys I was in danger from robbers, from my own people, from the gentiles. Danger in the city;  danger in the wilderness; danger at sea; danger from false brothers. I've been through toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, often without food, hungry, thirsty, in the cold. And apart from all that, I am always anxious for the churches!

I boast of things that show my weakness. God knows I'm not lying. At Damascus, the governor was guarding the city in order to seize me, but I was down in a basket through a window and escaped!

I must go on boasting. I know a man who went up to Third Heaven fourteen years ago, whether in body or out of body I do not know, God knows. I know this man visited Paradise, and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I boast.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of the greatness of my revelations, a thorn was put in my flesh, a messenger of Satan harassed me. Three times I pleaded to God about this, but he said to me "My grace is sufficient for you, and my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will gladly boast of my weaknesses. For the sake of Christ, I am content with weakness, hardships, insults, persecutions, and calamities. When I am weak, I am strong.

Examine yourselves. Test yourselves. See whether you are in the faith. We cannot do anything against the truth, only for the truth. We are glad when we are weak and when we are strong.

Finally: rejoice; aim for restoration; comfort one another; agree with one another; live in peace; greet one another with a holy kiss.

Yours faithfully,

Paul & Timothy

New Testament: Philemon, Philippians

Philemon

Dear Philemon, Apphia and Archippus,

I am an old man now, and a prisoner. I appeal to you for Onesimus. Formerly he was useless, but now he is useful to you and to me. I am sending him to you.

If you consider me a partner, then receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you, or owes anything to you, charge it to my account. I, Paul, will repay it. I am confident in your obedience. Please prepare a guest room for me; I am hoping to visit.

Yours faithfully,

Paul

P.S. Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke say 'hi'.


Philippians

Hey Philippians!

You are in every prayer of mine, because of your partnership with the gospel from day one until now. I am sure that the good work will be brought to completion at the Day of Jesus Christ. You are partakers, with me, of grace. I pray that your love may abound more and more, so that you will be pure and blameless for the Day of Christ.

I want you to know that my imprisonment has occurred to advance the gospel. It has become known throughout the imperial guard that my imprisonment is for Christ! My imprisonment has boosted the confidence of my brothers, and now they are more bold to speak without fear!

I will rejoice; I know that through your prayers and with the help of Jesus this will turn out well; I have full courage that Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. My desire is to depart and be with Christ; but it is necessary for me to remain in the flesh on your account.

Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I manage to visit you or not, I will hear that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened by your opponents. This is a sign to them of their destruction, and of your salvation. You shall not only believe in Christ but also suffer for his sake.

Do nothing from selfish ambition; be humble and count others more significant than yourself. Look not to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. This mind you have through Jesus, who, while in the form of God, was not equal to God, and was born human and became obedient to the point of death on a cross. God exalted him, so that every knee should bow at the name of Jesus, and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord!

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. Hold fast to the word, so that on the Day of Christ I may be proud to know that I did not labour in vain! Even if I am to be sacrificed for your faith, I am glad and rejoice, and so should you.

I intend to send Timothy to you soon. I hope to send him as soon as I see how it will go with me. I trust in the Lord that I will come also.

I have sent Epaphroditus to see you. He has been longing for you and was distressed that you learnt he was ill. He was very pooly, near to death. But God had mercy on him. Receive him well and honour him, for he nearly died in the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.

Finally: look out for dogs, look out for evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. We are the circumcision, but put no confidence in the flesh - although I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh: I was circumcised on the 8th day; I am of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, blameless under the law! But all that is nothing compared to knowing Jesus Christ. For his sake I have lost all things. I no longer have a righteousness of my own which comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes through faith! Righteousness from God depends on faith.

One thing I do: forget what lies behind and strain forward to what is ahead, press on towards the goal: the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ. Brothers, imitate me, and focus on those who follow in our example. Many walk as enemies of the cross. Their end is destruction; their god is their belly; their glory is their shame, with their minds set on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven. We await our saviour, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone! The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything!

Finally: think about whatever is true, whatever is honourable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable. What you have learned and heard and seen in me - practice these things.

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

It was kind of you to share my trouble. You were the first church to enter a giving and receiving partnership with me. You sent me help in Thessalonica. And I have received your most recent gift through Epaphroditus: a fragment offering, a sacrifice pleasing to God.

The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household!

Yours faithfully,

Paul and Timothy