Is Our Faith For Real?

I came across a cable program that claimed that Jesus never existed and that Christianity evolved out of pagan mythology and the Roman government. I am grateful to my Lord that I was prepared to listen to what the speakers had to say—my having done a deep dive into the Biblical idea of God”s Grace and the “Cross.” This is a truth that couldn’t have evolved out of paganism, not only because the idea [along with the worldview it rested on] was provably antithetic to mythological explanations as to the origin of evil or how to eradicate it [I spoke of this in my book “If It Be Possible“] but because—and here is my reason for mentioning this now—the languages of the time [with due respect to Latin and Aramaic] were inadequate to explicate with proper emphasis and clarity the message of God’s grace. This is the message that both the Bible reveals and our Faith [our “religion”] must proclaim. [1 Corinthians 1:23; 2:2].

Consider the following [I wrote “Essays in Grace” in this regard]:

  1. The Greek language never branched off into other languages: as Latin did into French, Spanish, etc. Dr. Caragounis tells us “Greek, on the other hand, never gave birth to any daughter languages.”
  2. The dialect of the Greek is not found in written form in any other document beside the Old and New Testaments. There are inscriptions in the common language of the time that suggests the development of the language into New Testament Greek [Koine] but, as J. B. Lightfoot is reported to have said: “…if we could only recover letters that ordinary people wrote to each other without any thought of being literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the understanding of the language of the New Testament generally.” Dr. Caragounis admits that “We do not have any substantial documents of spoken or written Koine by Greeks from the time of the New Testament.”
  3. The Language instead of branching merged 7 dialects into one which, after the Apostolic Age, split up again into multiple spoken dialects. Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of atheism wrote, “It seems probable that language evolves by the cultural equivalent of random genetic drift. … Latin drifted to become Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French….” This is not true of the Greek language!!! Now here’s the “kicker”! Caragounis calls this “unparalleled in the history of language. … Attica Greek could not preserve its purely Athenian character, and entered a course simplification, amalgamating elements from the other Greek dialects… it became … Koine [the Greek of the New Testament].” Dr. Caragounis explained, “In Hellenistic times [when the Scriptures were compiled] the … language is reunited, … and as such goes through its third stage [Koine]. In Byzantinian … times [which follow the time of the apostles and the writing of Scripture] it breaks up once again into Modern Greek.”
  4. My amateurish interest in Koine has always been historical and not exegetical. Unlike the scholars who took on the task of translating our New Testament, I only wanted to understand it. That’s why my paper (I submitted as a thesis for a college degree) was in the historical development of the “perfect tense” in Koine. This tense disappears in Modern Greek but scholars have little to go on since in the Byzantinian period of the language which followed Koine everything was written in the Old Classical Greek style [everybody loves Plato]. But I maintain that the perfect tense along with the development of a Greek passive voice out of the little understood “Middle” voice of the language (We don’t have this in English) was critical in explaining “grace”!
  5. Curious: the Greek “digamma” which represents the numeral “6” is missing from the language—or at least, our Bible.

Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? – Luke 18:8

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2 Responses to Is Our Faith For Real?

  1. Anil Kumar says:

    Praise the LORD dear pastor,
    I hope you are doing well. I’m pas. Anil Kumar from Bihar, North India. I have used to meet you in zoom meeting . Unfortunately I have not joined your meeting. Is it continue or not. If it is continue then send me link to join because I want to learn the bible with you for the glory of God. Amen.
    I’m praying for you you pray for me.🙏🙏
    Thank you.

    • johnhking_1ie7oo says:

      Brother Anil Kumar,

      We have not continued the meeting for now while we were waiting to hear from the Missions Department on direction. But I am wanting to set up this blog to communicate with readers, if possible. I also have email@johnhking.com

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