Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowas
Must be I am missing something, as I don't see how that works with what we are speaking of.
I agree all about the Rock, but not sure about some of the rest.
I agree the woman of rev 12 is the mother of us all, but I see her as the New Covenant Israel, what we typically call "the church," and yes, I know the church is not a new Covenant creation, but a revived alive Old.
The Book of Revelation describes two woman, which are the two Covenants. The woman in Revelation 12 is one of these women, and I see her as the one clothed with the glory of God depicted as the Sun, the highest of the authorities, and the moon under feet, an authority she has overcome.
Having said all that, I still see Rev 12 as a picture of events that befell the early church as she was persecuted for proclaiming the name of Jesus, but she continued and overcame the Jews and Gentiles that sought to destroy the message of Jesus, and is describing the first century church.
That is a simplified view of what I see in Rev 12. |
What did the Greek word ἐκκλησία mean to Judeans? Not to Greeks, but to first century Judeans who read their Bible scrolls in Greek?
Matthew 16:18 is the first place the Judean would read of Jesus using the word ἐκκλησία.
Deuteronomy 4:10 is the first place in the LXX where the word ἐκκλησία is employed. I said that to say this, many of us never had Greek as our birth language. My wife, her brother, and her mother all birth language is Greek. Yet, they don't think like first century Judeans, or first century Judean Christians. We all have to get past the things we accepted as we came up in "church" because we use words without much thought about how THEY used those words. The ἐκκλησία was ( to a Judean ) the assembly of Israel. But just not any assembly. An assembly who heard the voice of God as in
Deuteronomy 4:10. The woman is Israel, the church and Israel are inseparable. The stars which are her headship are the 12 tribal elders of Israel. When we can understand how they originally understood what they were reading we can see what they were seeing. Not taking an ancient document and adjusting it to fit our ecclesiastical traditions.
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