How to Study the Bible
Vern Peterman · Dec 30, 2007
How to Study Bible (2007), No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926048374295

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

handout today, and it's a replacement for the very front, very front of your satchel. And it's an updated table of contents with page numbers, etc. So except for the very first one. So anyway, and then you've got page numbers. I already have this. Yeah, but no, this is different. The reason it's different is because before you didn't have page numbers. Now you have them. Before you didn't have the appendix items listed. Now you do. So this is That's why we handed out the end as the material is being developed and we don't have the full listing. This is the full listing.

I'd take the other one and toss it or use it for scratch paper or something like that. You have to have your appendix. Yeah, we don't want to have your appendix taken out unless that's absolutely necessary. Anyway, I just want to make that clear. The other thing is, we have several past weeks papers in the back. This will be the last Sunday they'll be out there.

If you are missing any from the past and they're not there, you can do one of a few things. One, you can download them. In most cases, it's downloadable. You can print out what you need. You can also, I can also email it to people, and the other option is you can ask, again, Nancy, Sue, or Sue Ellen, one of those three ladies, and they'll be able to fill you in. So, any one of those, and you'll have it. Okay.

Now, back to this series of questions we went through last week, which are centered around the account in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 26 through 38. We have that quoted in the New American Standard here on page 40, the first page of last week's handout. And we went through some of the numbers, but not all of them. Now, I'm trying to figure out where we left. I think we left it at the end of about number 12. Do we know anything else about Joseph and Mary? How do we know these things? So 13, do we know anything about the subsequent events with Mary and Joseph? How do we know them?

Hi, Sue. We're using last week's handout, continuing with that. So if you have that, fine. If not, it's over in the list. And there are two items that go along with it. Okay, so do we know anything about the subsequent events with Mary and Joseph? In other words, outside of what's in this Luke passage where Gabriel talks to Mary. Do we know anything else? Okay, but how about, aside from prophecy, because you're right, there's just a lot of prophecy about our Lord's first coming, but aside from this passage, what else do we know about what happened with Mary and Luke, excuse me, Mary and Joseph?

So there was a subsequent event there. So what this tells us about is Mary is for the first time being told she's going to have the Messiah. And you're right. If you look at it, does it answer every question you might have? No. But we could go over some things that it does say. This tells about the account of the angel who spoke to Mary. Questions? Okay, the angel spoke to Mary. Gabriel spoke to Mary.

How about Joseph? He had a dream. Okay, Joseph had a dream. And what information did he give? That he needs to pick up and move to Egypt. Okay, but that was later on that he had the dream. But yeah, initially it's the message in the end of Matthew chapter 1. Go ahead and take her to be your wife.

Because we talked about what was happening here was, in the context of the culture, really a problem. That Mary was pregnant during the betrothal period. The family and friends of the bride were to keep, it was their responsibility to keep the bride pure. to that wedding day and to have her be pregnant was a huge shame on the family and friends. So this was a serious problem in their ongoing, in a small town, in their ongoing relationships.

Feel free to join us if you'd like. Okay, alright. There is very little. The genealogy is it. One thing is where we have a minimal amount of information, one of the ways that we can fill in with the caveat we need to be careful not to override what scripture says, but we can fill in some of those things with what we know from the culture. So those things can give us some information.

Question about the evangelist speaking to Joseph. My Bible shows it capitalized and written. Was that because it's in a dream? And when the angel's speaking to Mary, it's not capitalized? Is there any significance to that? Okay, one thing is the capitalizing is only in the English.

So I think one thing when you read through something that's important to keep in mind that it may be an indicator of what the translators think, but in the ultimate, the Greek did not use capitalization as a common pattern, except in certain specific instances.

But we have a tendency to capitalize things that the Greek language did not. So that would be one just point of clarification. In other words, you still have to look at the context. What does it say? The Greeks would use capitalization in a lot fewer instances than what we would. In other words, they'd look at a person's name or something like that, and they would do that. But we capitalized a lot of things that they would not. So that's just one thing to take a look at.

Things like father, son, things like that, typically not capitalized. So a lot of those things that capitalization is a translator's choice rather than, in every instance, the original language. If you look at it, I mean, we could go through the whole account of the birth and then the subsequent events going down to Bethlehem, the shepherds coming, all the other details that we have and see, including going down to Egypt, coming back out of Egypt, all those things, going back up to Nazareth. a fair amount of detail and then the thing to be careful of is, you brought up the question of capitalization, some events and the Christmas story is one of them, some events have a tremendous amount of mythology or assumption. What do I mean by that? What's some of the Christmas mythology that we have?

Three Kings, we don't know. First of all, you know that the song We Three Kings of Orion are? Three problems right there. Okay? They weren't kings. Okay? We don't know that there were three. There may well have been more. And they're wise men, magi, and not kings, and they're not from the Orient. You know? So, it just, it's all wrong. But anyway, yeah, that's part of the myth. What other mythology have we got?

One of the things Marilyn's bringing up is this question of the date of Christmas. A normal year would have had the shepherds off at a different place. I would make this exception in that in the same way that we have abnormal years, just like November last year was really warm and You know, we had, for example, this last winter, an extraordinary snow and cold, you know, starting from around Christmas and then on for a couple of months. So, in the same way that we have exceptional weather, they also have exceptional weather. And some of the exceptional weather could have allowed the shepherds to be there later.

So, a possibility. The usual pattern, no, but possible. I had read somewhere had something to do with the people that designed the 2057, with the solstice. Oh yes, yeah. The setting it on December 25th is basically a carryover of the pagan tradition regarding the solstice, yeah. So a spring inertia other than December or in wintertime is probably more likely. This is a better way to put it.

And if you put everything together and look at what's possible, probable, we know, for example, Herod died in middle of March, about the 13th or 14th of 4 BC. And almost certainly the magi and the shepherds were not there at the same time. And there's another piece of mythology where you have Christmas cards and manger scenes with them there at the same time. Probably almost certainly not there at the same time.

The absolute latest that Christ could have been born is about January of 4 BC. That's about the latest. And possibly even a few years, or as much as a few years earlier. and more likely not in the wintertime but still possible mostly because of variations in weather. So you get some things like that. Another one is...

One of the things that I think is important to look at, because astronomers have looked at different possibilities for comets, convergence of the planets, things like that, and there are several possibilities in terms of natural events, but I think when you read the account in the first 12 verses, especially the last account, the latter part of that account, the star seems to be something extraordinary where here are the wise men, the Magi, traveling south about a half dozen miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

They're headed south and it's said the star was right over the place where Jesus was born and that would have been different in their coming from the East, a different direction altogether. So the star seems extraordinary and probably not a natural phenomenon. I say probably because it's not quite so specific that I could say no it isn't. It doesn't say it was this or was that, but the behavior of it, that would be very odd for a star. to actually lead them to the place where Jesus was born. Possibly, by the description, even the house. But, we don't know. Some people have said, well, it must have been an angel. Maybe. It must have been a special creation of some kind. Maybe it was the Shekinah Glory. I've heard various speculations.

The reality is, It doesn't say exactly what it was. The word means a luminescence of brightness. and it was at the end of the last listing. And Matthew 2, the first 12 verses, is the only place that really references it in the historical context. So again, there's some uncertainty because of that. The reality is that because of Herod's death, we can say this is an absolute latest.

Outside of that, it's kind of, here's the probabilities. because of variations like seasons, the uncertainty, was it a natural star? I'm inclined to think not. Because of that, it led them to the place that it was, right there. Things like that. So it seems like more of a, here's the latest possible, and going too crazy early, it starts getting to be a little unrealistic too.

Okay, why did Luke point out that Joseph was of the descendants of David? Because he had to go to Bethlehem. Because he had to go to Bethlehem? Pardon? Okay, there's really a few reasons, aren't there? A few reasons. One, you brought up a good point. He had to go to Bethlehem. Why is it important he goes to Bethlehem?

Bethlehem is the house of David, and that's where Micah 5.2 says that he'll be born, so you put those two together, had to be, right? So that part has to be.

So that's key. And the fact that Joseph was actually probably real familiar with all the people there, because most of the descendants of David would gather around that place, for he and Mary to be up in Galilee was sort of a stray location. It was acceptable, but the normal thing would be to settle in your family area, your family's lineage. So yeah, just simply to satisfy the requirements of Scripture, that would be one thing.

What else about this David passage? Sure, the son of David, since Nathan gave the promise to David that it would be one of your descendants and that name keeps being repeated multiple times by Isaiah, for example. Isaiah either gives the name of David or refers to Jesse, his father. And yeah, repeatedly, continuously pointed out to David, even after the exile, when everybody came back, the book of Haggai tells Zerubbabel, the governor, who is a descendant of David, that it's going to be your descendant. So it keeps narrowing down, and that's a pattern in scripture. You see the Messiah keep narrowing down as time goes on. You know, okay, it's going to be a descendant of David. Well, there's lots of descendants of David, right?

So it narrows down. So it's this one. So it's this one. So it's this one. And now here's the rubble bowl. And so you keep seeing the narrowing. Here's the final narrowing right here. Mary, it's you. Joseph, it's you. Kind of that pattern, but I would compare it to a funnel. In other words, you've got something where it keeps getting narrower and narrower and narrower, and finally the Lord narrows it down. So you got that.

The name of the Virgin was Mary. Was that a common or uncommon name? Yeah, common name. Better than one in five of the women during New Testament times in Israel were named Mary. By going through all the different inscriptions and listings, including here it's inscribed on burial monuments and ossuary boxes and things like that, from the time they've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of various inscriptions. I was just reading a fellow by the name of Richard Baucom, who's over in Scotland. He just retired this year. He did a study on that, going through hundreds and hundreds of names from New Testament times.

Mary was better than one in five of the names. So, think about this. In one way, Mary wasn't anything special. She was a descendant of David, a little peasant girl, you know, in a little town outside of the area of the descendants of David. In one way, very plain and ordinary. And yet, this other thing is this plain, ordinary, who would have ever thought kind of girl, the Lord says, you're the one.

This is a remarkable set of contrasts. Question? Yeah. Do you think that when they were espoused or decided that they would get married, They realized that both of them were from the house of David. The ancestry. Yeah, they probably knew because that was something that they kept track of.

Until 70 AD, the records were kept in Jerusalem. In the temple complex, there's the middle central area of the temple called the Naas. On the north side of the temple is where those records were kept. and that was destroyed in 70 AD when the Romans came and destroyed and burned.

So that's why these days, other than a few possible clues, the great majority of the Jews have no idea which tribe they're from because it's all been lost. If you run into somebody whose last name is Cohen, that would be a priest, or Levi or Levitt, those kinds of names are possible clues that they may have an ancestry. I wouldn't say it's absolute proof, but it's a clue that they may have an ancestry. And it will really be only the Lord's revelation in the future that will disclose to them what their ancestry is, because they don't know, other than those possible clues.

Do you think that Mary and Joseph and Nazareth had journeyed in some time to the temple and looked up their ancestors? Yeah, let's ask that question. Yeah, here's Doug asking the question. Do you think Mary and Joseph would have journeyed to the temple and looked up something like that? It's a long ways. Yeah, it's a long ways, but let's think of some of the reasons why Mary and Joseph might have already been to the temple before this time. What would be some reasons why they would already have been to the temple?

They themselves would be involved in the sacrifices, that would be one thing. What else goes on annually at the temple? There were seven mosaic festivals that were called out in the law that any righteous observing Jew would make some effort to go to those, right?

And so it's seven of those, two more added after that. One is Purim from the book of Esther, and the other one is what we now call Hanukkah. It's in John chapter 10. which is about 22 or 23. And so those two additional ones were observed. It's not called Hanukkah in the Gospel of John, it's the Feast of Dedication. So anyway, those nine things would have them coming there. The other thing is Bethlehem is south of Jerusalem by only six miles and you would go through Jerusalem on the way to Bethlehem. It would be the typical route.

And Every year, Joseph, being an observant Jew, would come down, because by the New Testament times, they had assigned woodcutting times, because remember, the temple must always have a fire going. They were never to let the fire go out. And so they would have an annual assigned time for each clan within each tribe to cut wood and bring wood to the temple. And Joseph, being an able-bodied carpenter, with wood cutting skills and tools and everything would have been certainly called upon maybe annually to do his turn at the wood cutting. So each clan, and that would have been the clan of David that he was from, especially only being a half dozen miles south of Jerusalem, would be called on to do their wood cutting because that fire must never go out. So they would have had those reasons altogether to have made multiple trips to the temple.

Confirming the genealogy, it isn't stated. It would be fairly easy to assume, though, that, oh yeah, you'd check that out. Why would the genealogy matter in the culture? Can you think of some of the reasons why the genealogy matters? Ah, good point. Marilyn brought up inheritance. Excellent point. Good. Why else?

This doesn't fit Joseph and Mary, but what are one of the qualifications for being a priest? Being of the right tribe, and so you've got to show that you're of the right tribe. towards the end of the Old Testament there are some instances where people were disqualified because that tribal descendancy was not clear. Is that interesting? Yeah, we find specific instances where it wasn't quite clear and so they're disqualified.

Ezra and Nehemiah have accounts like that. So that would be one thing. Another I just mentioned was the woodcutting responsibility. Which planter you win? And if you're in this clan, then you need to cut your wood this time. And if you're in this clan, you need to cut your wood.

Is that in the Bible? That was one that was developed after the time of, at the time of Nehemiah, they began kind of the roots of that. And by New Testament times, they had settled it down to, here's not just the tribe, but the clan within that tribe. But is it documented? Oh yeah, it's not in the Bible. Nehemiah makes reference to it on a tribal basis, but later on it was developed where, okay, we've got to break it down within the tribe. Now it's within the clan, and this clan has it this time, and this clan has it this time. So they make assignments based on not just the tribe you're in, but the clan that you're in. But the Romans took advantage of that.

The census was by clan also. That's right. Yeah, and so the Jews, and there's another reason, there's another reason for the genealogy, you know, where do I have to go for the census? And so all that, all that fit. Everybody was all checking that anyway, so there's no question, you know, what clan are you in? Well, you better know because, you know, you've got this Roman thing that's, you know, you better have documentation that you've done your registration. Yeah. In those days it was very, very important. Yes, yeah, and you know we just kind of ticked off several different reasons here why you need to know it. Well, yeah, because you have the ten tribes, the two tribes and all this. They were a tribe.

For most of us, genealogy is something of interest. It's a curiosity. As a matter of fact, one of the greatest, by numbers, one of the greatest uses of the Internet is genealogical studies. But it's all by curiosity. It's because people are curious and interested and they want to find out, you know, I'm descended from this king or, you know.

But one of the reasons they modern, I mean, is medical reasons. Yeah, we have modern medical reasons that are driving some of that. Yeah. But in those days, there are several different things, some of them legal, some of them having to do with the Mosaic Law, or even as we see here, the Roman Law, where you've got to go back to the place of your clan's origination. So, several different reasons to pursue that.

Okay, how about, what can we say about the culture of the village area and time of these events? In other words, the village I'm talking about is Nazareth. How would we go about finding out about this Nazareth? What's the particular environment around Nazareth? First of all, where is Nazareth?

North. Northern Israel, and what's the area we said last week? It would be west of the Sea of Galilee. West of the Sea of Galilee, and the region is called what? From Nazareth you can see Mount Hermon. Well, okay, he was of the tribe of Judah, but the area around there, now this is northern part, so the area we set up in question 7, where's Galilee? Galilee is actually the region, the sea next to it, to the east of Galilee, it is called the Sea of Galilee, and it has a few other names too.

So here's this place, here's this town of Nazareth, we said last week, probably as few as 80 people, possibly no more than a few hundred people in this little town. How many of you have lived in a real small town for a while? So you've been there, you know what that's like. I lived seven miles from a real small town. So if you know the character of these small towns, everybody knows everything, unless it's by rumor, in which case nobody knows anything.

Yeah, yeah, here's what good can come out of Nazareth. So here's this little podunk town. It's a town... Yeah, in other words, if you weren't from the area or didn't have some reason to contact here, you might not have any idea where it was. I think it would be a fair guess that the Roman officials back in Rome had not a clue where Nazareth was. It's this little village. There's just hundreds and hundreds of villages. They don't know the name Nazareth unless by some fluke.

Because the villages were fairly close together. Yes. The major town, Sepphoris, that this was located near, Nazareth was five miles south of this major town of Sepphoris, which would have been a significant city. Aside from that, you know, Little Podunk Town, and whoever heard of it.

That whole area had only been redeveloped within about a century before Christ's birth. Because prior to that, when the Assyrians pulled everybody out of there, the place was almost empty for centuries. also pretty close to the place where Jesus performed his first miracle. Yeah, Jesus had a lot of ministry in that area and his first miracle would have been just to the north. Water and wine. Very close to that. I've been there. I've been to Nashville. It's a little tiny place. Even today it's still a little. Yeah, oh yeah. Today it's not that big. It's not a suburb. Yeah.

Something else, it would have been almost entirely just Jews. It would have been just the Jewish culture. And notice here's Joseph. It says that Joseph was a righteous man. Defined as the Jews would define righteous. probably following the rabbinical customs under Hillel. Hillel was Gamaliel's grandfather and Hillel was of the tribe of Judah. And the fact that Joseph determined to put Mary away quietly was one of the rules that Hillel came up with, that you could do that. So all those things, you know, it's an absolute, well, not absolute certain, but good chance with the information we have that that's the case.

Okay, now, how did Gabriel's greeting to Mary compare with other angel greetings in the Bible? Can you think of some other angel greetings in the Bible? And how did the angels usually greet people? What was their usual, you know, greeting like? Yeah, the first thing they say, don't be afraid.

Why? Because that's a normal reaction. Yeah, and that's, Meryl, that's an excellent point. It was the normal reaction when an angel greeted people. The angel has to comfort them and don't be afraid because their first reaction was, oh no, you know, right? And why would they have that reaction? Why would they have that reaction? Yeah, it's not normal. And what about the angel grabs you as, uh-oh.

This huge amount of light. One of the things that's interesting, the Gospel, excuse me, in the book of Revelation, the Apostle John twice began to worship an angel, not because he was a pagan or mistaken, but the angel was so bright he thought he was seeing God. This is like, hey wait a minute, there's no sunglasses in the world that's going to take care of this problem. Just immense, overpowering brightness. So that's one thing.

The common first statement of the angels when they would appear as angels is, don't be afraid. So that's one thing. How else does it compare with other angel greetings in the Bible? they usually had a message. Okay, the angels typically had a message. And by the way, our Greek word that's translated angel is angelos, and it means messenger. Okay, so yeah, you're right on. The angels were by character, they sometimes were assigned to do other things, but by character and by usual designation, messengers. Yeah, good point.

What else? Did angels appear to individuals, small groups, or large numbers of people? Yeah, usually individuals to small groups. Is that something? You don't typically find, here's an angel and some mass of people. That's not the typical instance where you see angels. Usually, and so this one compares to it, where the angel shows up individually to marry. That would be fairly typical. So this fits with the usual scripture pattern. Anything else? Anything else come to mind as typical angel greetings? What about the character of what the angel had to say? Did the angels show up and just say, hey, have a nice day?

Along the idea of the messenger, it's typically an important message. So that's another key thing. They didn't just come up and say, hey, I heard you're having tacos on Tuesday or something. It wasn't just nominal stuff. They would deliver a message, as Mike pointed out, but it was typically an important message. Okay? An important message. Usually a life-changing message. Ah! See, so hear what Carol said? Usually a life-changing message.

And boy, if anything's life-changing, can you imagine this? Oh, by the way, little Mary, you peasant woman that's probably in her early teens in this little podunk town, you're going to have a Messiah. You know, that one that's been promised for eons, for centuries and centuries. You know, you're going to be the one.

Life-changing is right. Yeah. I think in that case also it was a compliment. You are highly favored. Ah, isn't it something? And listen, how often did the angel messages come with compliments? I don't know. Think about it. Let's just kind of scan through. Here are the angels appearing to Lot. Do they come with compliments? Not really. So there's that. We're going to see as we go through the book of Genesis in our main service, a number of times angels are going to show up. And we're even going to talk preliminarily about it some this morning. But yeah, that's kind of a unique thing for the angel to come with a compliment. Okay, what kind of response does Mary have to the angel's greeting? Why is it typical? And Mary says, oh that's nice. and blow the angel off?

Isn't it interesting that we get the repeated we get the repeated message that she thinks about it. Isn't that something? So it's interesting, she's a very contemplative or contemplative person. She doesn't just kind of, oh okay, I'll just let it sit. She sort of ponders things and thinks them through. So that's an interesting thing. But yeah, that's a part of it. Which is pretty amazing considering... I mean, I always think how I would react.

I'd probably say, okay, and then I'd think about it, and I'd probably react two days later. Yeah, what did I see? I can remember a couple of times up at my folks' place when I saw a mountain lion. And each time that I did, it was about a second or two after the mountain lion was there that I realized I had seen one. Because they go by really quickly and you wonder, what was that? Oh, that was a mountain lion.

And what's interesting is this account seems to imply that she, as amazing as this was, that she seems to have been thinking carefully from the outset and considering it and not just blown away by the whole thing. So yeah, that's an interesting thing about her response. What else do you see about her response? What questions does she ask? What does she say?

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Yeah, she's got the logic of this thing. Wait a minute here, I'm betrothed, but you know, we've not had the wedding yet, and I'm not doing anything to make this come about. So how's this going to happen, right? I'm a virgin, and that's the way it is. So yeah, she's just asking a logical question. If it had been okay, I hear I'm married to Joseph and you know I've been married for six months or a year or something and then the angel shows up she wouldn't have been questioning this but this thing she's saying wait a minute I'm not you know I've not done anything to get pregnant I'm not married yet how is this going to happen?

Evidently she knew where babies came from. Yeah, yeah. She was not an ignorant lady, even though a peasant woman. Young gal. Yeah, she knew, and enough to say, you know, how can this be? And so I think that's one thing. She's just, you know, we've mentioned before, she's a gal that thinks. And lo and behold, here she is thinking. asking the question. My own inclination is to ask a lot of questions later, but she didn't. She was pretty fast on her feet and said, wait a minute, how is this going to happen?

It's interesting that Angel gave her proof, maybe some evidence of the validity of this message, because it says Okay. Yeah, so, and why is that proof? Why is it proof that there's some validity to this message? Just because she was, she was bearing Elizabeth. Okay. Yeah, you knew how far along?

Yeah, and so this would be, this would be some, some good confirmation because it would not be expected. right? There's Elizabeth, and it wasn't say, well, she's having babies all the time, what's the big deal? But yeah, she was of a condition where it was like, this was not expected at all. It is not... Mary probably didn't know that Elizabeth was expecting.

Yeah, that's right. So here's a relative. And she's fairly... Yeah, and she's farther along. But this would also be something of an independent confirmation. Yep, this is for real. By the time Mary got over to see Elizabeth, six months along, Elizabeth is going to be able to say, yeah, I am. So it isn't something where if Mary went over right away, she couldn't tell. Elizabeth would be able to confirm and tell visually, yeah, most certainly. That brings up a question.

It says in the scripture here, Mary went into the hill country, to the city of Judah. So Elizabeth was not probably very close. That's right, that's right. And to think of it, where is this hill country? Not Judea, it doesn't say Judea, it's Judah, which is a different place. Okay, alright. But not right nearby.

No, yeah, she had to travel somewhere. And so it was news she may not have otherwise gotten, but it allowed her to get confirmation. What else do you notice? Mary gets this news and she's saying, hey, you go back and tell the Lord, no way, I'm not volunteering for this thing. This is too much. This is not on my schedule. This is going to cause me a heap of trouble. I'm not a married woman. I'm in a small town here. This is really going to be awful.

Yeah, isn't it interesting, she doesn't say, oh man, Lord, not this, you know. By going to Elizabeth, she verified with the agent, that's it. That's right. Here's this verification, she could verify, yep, I guess it's going to happen as it is with me.

Now, both births were miraculous, but in a different way, right? So that's interesting, both of them were extraordinary births, but extraordinary in a different way. But the birth of John the Baptist, the pregnancy and birth of John, with John the Baptist was extraordinary enough to be a verifiable thing and to make sure that this angel wasn't just some phony apparition. That Elizabeth was considerably older.

Yep. Because of it, you mentioned moving on. period that she did not have children there. Yeah, I don't know that it says, so I think we're probably at a place of guessing, but it was apparently unusual. Yeah, you're quite a bit older. Yeah. Okay, let's take a look here.

Number 19, is there a possible reason or reasons that the angel is called the angel in the rest of the passage, and why don't they just keep calling him Gabriel? What else do we know about this Gabriel guy? Let's start with the first question. Why don't they just keep calling him Gabriel? Gabriel said this, Gabriel said that. Why the angel? So he wasn't worshipped, he wasn't emphasized too much?

Yeah, it's something we noted last week. There's only, out of all, I mean, there's so many angels that, you know, John gives numbers of myriads and myriads, which is ten thousands of ten thousands. And that was the biggest number in the Greek numbering system. So to them that was like, you pegged the meter. And this is, you pegged the meter of pegged the meter. This is way over the top. So there's lots of angels. We only have two of them of unfallen angels by name. Are they ever referred to as he or she?

The angels seem to come on with a masculine characteristic, contrary, that's again one of our mythology items, but a masculine characteristic seems to be typical. Rather than say he or she, they say the angel. Yeah, but then even those things can be masculine or feminine, you know, in the Greek system. Right, because they're probably not either or. Yeah, the reality is that we know that angels don't reproduce, and gender is not the characteristic, but their appearance, their apparition, seems to be more on the masculine side.

Well, every time they mentioned the Bible to Abraham and so forth, they were male. Yeah, the references to masculine, the appearances to masculine, though we shouldn't take that as reproductive in any normal sense. One of the things that, when we look at this question here, Giving the name of an angel, we only have two angels for which that's the case or for whom that's the case, out of thousands and thousands and probably millions is probably not out of line of angels. Only two of them are given names and not that much, not that often. So it's not like they're mentioned front and back and for everything else. In the popular mythology of the day, they had additional names for angels. They added more names.

But in the Bible, that's one of the things where the Bible is very conservative in handing out angel names. And one of the things here, you'll notice several places where there is a tendency of the angels not to draw glory to themselves. And that may be another reason here. Mary is given a name so that there's some verifiability with this, but no glorification of the angel. He was the messenger. Couldn't you say there were three angels that were named? I say two unfallen angels because where's the third one? The other would be Satan. Satan. Yes, Satan would be the fallen angel. So it's interesting.

Just because being an angel is probably more important than what his name was and his characteristics. Yeah, in the end his identification was probably another point for Mary to say this is valid because the name Gabriel only shows up otherwise in the book of Daniel. It doesn't say, he doesn't say. Yeah, he doesn't pronounce it, so at some point there may have been a description outside of that.

Yeah. In 38 it says, Behold the bondslave of the Lord. So she, I guess, believes that he is. Yeah, yeah. But she didn't call him Gabriel, she just said Boncelet. Yeah. And where he's from. Yeah, so here's, basically, it may be done to me according to your word.

She doesn't say, hey, no way, Jose. You must be kidding. Or wait a minute, when did I get to vote? There's none of that kind of response. She says, if this is what the God has in mind, here I am. I'm the Lord's instrument. She wasn't really given a choice. No, it's interesting. There's nothing that says she was given a choice. By the other hand, you don't see a reaction out of her like, you know, I'm mad and I still am, you know. You know, I'm really ticked that I got told this. A pregnant woman can do that. Yeah. Yeah. She wasn't pregnant.

It wasn't the angels. Angels given a certain position, a certain message. I'm thinking of Michael. He was protector of Israel. Gabriel was more or less the messenger of various places. Right, and what we find is, although we're not given a lot of detail, we do have the consistent picture that angels have assignments, that there are hierarchies, that there are orders of authority. and that kind of thing. And we see some of that crop up not with names but with assignments and descriptions in the book of Revelation. Angels crop up repeatedly in the book of Revelation. We're out of time, or not out of questions, so the rest of it I have to leave up to you. There are about 10 more questions.

We also didn't get to this Greek interlinear which is a two page legal size. It's slightly off white. And that has some interesting pieces of information. One thing is that when it says the angel, that's specifically not just something inserted in English, but it's from the Greek, definite article. So anyway, we won't have time to go in detail on it, but it's a reference you can look to and get some information from it.

All right. We're done with this elective. We're starting next week on new electives. So hopefully you signed up if you're planning on taking those up and hope you got some good things out of this class. Thank you. OK. Thank you. Thank you for all your research and all.