The Testing of Jesus

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Now that I think of it, I have heard the claim that the devil controls the airwaves.
Yes, I've heard this as well. According to some members of my family, the devil took over when radio stations started playing rock-n-roll music. The horror....
 
Yes, I've heard this as well. According to some members of my family, the devil took over when radio stations started playing rock-n-roll music. The horror....
Good thing metal has never caught on here the way it has in some European countries. They'd really freak if the country's number one band was metal, as is the case in Finland (Nightwish).
 
@Mystic
You are awfully quick to say No.

Re: Mark's use of the word immediately.
Here is today's biblical trivia which I learned by Googling.

The Greek word euthus is often translated as "immediately" but it doesn't always mean "right away". It conveys a sense of urgency though

Euthus appears 59 times in the New Testament.

41 of those times are in Mark's gospel.

It is thought by some to be merely a stylistic preference with Mark. Mark is the shortest gospel of course. Someone has calculated that this means Mark is 15x more likely to use the word than the other gospel writers.
 
@Mystic
You are awfully quick to say No.

Re: Mark's use of the word immediately.
Here is today's biblical trivia which I learned by Googling.

The Greek word euthus is often translated as "immediately" but it doesn't always mean "right away". It conveys a sense of urgency though

Euthus appears 59 times in the New Testament.

41 of those times are in Mark's gospel.

It is thought by some to be merely a stylistic preference with Mark. Mark is the shortest gospel of course. Someone has calculated that this means Mark is 15x more likely to use the word than the other gospel writers.
You forget that Mark's phrase "The Spirit drove HIm" imples that Jesus is still in the same trance state as His baptismal vision. Hence, all the visions in the wilderness. that "immediateky" ensue.
 
You forget that Mark's phrase "The Spirit drove HIm" imples that Jesus is still in the same trance state as His baptismal vision. Hence, all the visions in the wilderness. that "immediateky" ensue.
Could you explain the implication please? I don't follow the logic.
Where do you get Mark having Jesus in a trance at.his baptism?
 
If early in the story, knowledge is said to be evil in and around the logic tree .... is then the sol/mind/psyche the item considered evil as in Ute, Spruce and other seeder things as the snow falls?

Isn't there a novel based on Black Spruce and thus likely dark and bad according to myth and folk loe ring? Shady behavior of unheard of processing ... may be the phoque of sealing up such stuff from the emotional cat harcis ... word is said to be a metaphor for something else ... simile is insane in the extent! That's Ci Mile in the journey ...
 
Could you explain the implication please? I don't follow the logic.
Where do you get Mark having Jesus in a trance at.his baptism?

Could you explain the implication please? I don't follow the logic.
Where do you get Mark having Jesus in a trance at.his baptism?
The natural interpretation of Mark is that Jesus, and only Jesus, sees the "heavens torn apart" and the "dove" and only He hears the heavenly voice.
Clearly, He is experiencing an altered state of consciousness which is normally called the trance state. "Immediately (yes, the word means "with no intervening events") the Spirit DROVE Him into the wilderness." The Greek verb "ekballo" implies a lack of self-control, even resistance; it is the standard violent verb used for exorcisms. Jesus remains in an altered state of consciousness, a trance-like state in which He has no control over what He is experiencing. The waking visions in the wilderness imply such an altered state of consciousness.

When I was a Theology professor, I used to play bridge with Education School professors. These were raucous occasions in which the wine flowed freely. One night, I suggested that Ellie, another Education professor, be invited to join us. I was told that she was still too deep in grief over the loss of her husband Joe, who had recently died of cancer. Suddenly the Spirit put me in a trance state and I found myself saying, "Ellie has just been contacted by Joe and she's wondering if the experience is real. Tell her I can assure her it is." As in the Marcan Temptation narrative, "the Spirit drove" me to make this spectacular pronouncment; I had no control over what I was saying and would never have otherwise taken the risk to make such an audacious claim. Upon hearing my words, Paul, the Dean of the School of Education, just had to call Ellie to share what I had said. Ellie replied that she had just experienced a prolonged waking vision of Joe in a trance-like state during which they had intimate conversation and, being skeptical of such things, she was indeed wondering if the experience was real. So my clairvoyant assurance was of great comfort to her.
 
It's certainly possible that the wilderness experience took place right away. The narrative flows from one event to the other in all three gospels.

A trance like state is also possible but I don't think we can be certain about this. Perhaps Jesus was just having a spiritual moment. Luke has him filled with the Holy Spirit after his baptism.

I'm still curious about Jesus being driven into the wilderness in Mark but led there in Luke and Matthew.
 
A trance like state is also possible but I don't think we can be certain about this. Perhaps Jesus was just having a spiritual moment. Luke has him filled with the Holy Spirit after his baptism.
So you don't think heavenly visions and hearing heavenly voices imply an altered state of consciousness? If not, they should be very common.
I'm still curious about Jesus being driven into the wilderness in Mark but led there in Luke and Matthew.
Your Bible text is the product of Text Criticism, the science to wading through the countless variant manuscript readings to determine the original text. Preference for "the harder reading" is one of the criteria used in this selection process. Scribes tried to eliminate or smoothe over difficult readings , In the Temptation narrative, "immediately the Spirit DROVE (cast Him out) Him" is clearly the harder and therefore the original reading. The author of Q (Matthew and Luke's special source) changed "drove" to "led" to make it more respectable. When the outcome of Jesus' involuntary expulsion into the wilderness is supernatural visionary and auditory waking experiences, "trance" is the only appropriate term to describe the requisite altered state of consciousness.

btw. Papias learns from "John the Elder, disciple of the Lord" that Matthew wrote up a collection of sayings of Jesus in Hebrew, not the Gospel that bears Matthew's name. So the sayings source Q may well have been composed b Mathew...
 
Altered states of consciousness are not where I go in seeking to understand biblical text.

But I am starting to get your worldview @Mystic

Not saying it is right or wrong. Just a different point of view from my own
 
Altered states of consciousness are not where I go in seeking to understand biblical text.

But I am starting to get your worldview @Mystic

Not saying it is right or wrong. Just a different point of view from my own
What is so frustrating for me is this: my altered states experiences of the Holy Spirit are BY FAR the highlights of my life--and I have no doubt that would be true for you too, if you had the same mind-bending experiences. That's why I'm so grateful for my Pentecostal roots that shaped my consciousness to allow such absolutely glorious life-changing experiences!
 
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