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πονηρία (Ponēria): Wickedness and Moral Evil · Reformed Thinking

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  So what if I told you that the ancient word used to describe
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  the absolute worst kind of evil, like the cosmic enemy of all
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  that is good, actually started out as a word for just having a
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  really long, exhausting day at the office?
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  It is wild to think about. It really is welcome to reformed
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  thinking. I am so thrilled you're joining
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  us today. If you are prepping for a
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  theological discussion or doing some personal study, or, you
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  know, if you are just insanely curious about how ancient
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  language shapes our modern understanding of reality, you're
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  in the right place. Absolutely.
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  Today we have a very specific mission for our deep dive into
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  the historical records. We are unpacking a huge stack of
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  lexical and theological documents, historical sources
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  too, concerning one single ancient Greek Word family.
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  That word is poneria and its root poneros.
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  Right, which sounds like a highly technical Greek word
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  study. It does, but here is where it
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  gets so fascinating. When you read an English Bible,
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  translators typically render this word as wickedness or
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  malice or depravity. But the ancient texts show this
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  startling evolution. This concept starts off as a
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  description of physical exhaustion, literally sweating
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  in the dirt. Then, over centuries, it morphs
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  into this massive political insult.
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  It becomes a weapon. A total weapon, and then it
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  matures into the absolute biblical description of human
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  rebellion against God before finally becoming a literal title
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  for the devil himself. To help us unpack how a word
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  travels from tired muscles to demonic titles, I am joined by
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  our resident expert to give us the historical context we need.
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  I am so glad to be here. So let's dig into this.
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  We are looking at a word with massive cultural baggage, but
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  where does the story actually begin in the historical record?
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  Well, we begin in the dirt, quite literally.
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  To understand how the New Testament writers view human
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  depravity, we have to first look at the cultural baggage this
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  word carried in the ancient Greek world long before the New
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  Testament was even a thought. OK, so etymologically speaking,
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  the adjective ponaros belongs to a group of words derived from
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  the verbs pone or panamai. And what did those mean to an
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  average person back then? If you lived in ancient Greece,
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  those verbs were just your daily reality.
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  They mean to toil, to labor heavily, or to suffer poverty.
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  Think of an agrarian society where survival requires back
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  breaking labor under a really hot Mediterranean sun.
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  So you are out in the field all day.
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  Right. So at its very inception, this
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  Word family has absolutely nothing to do with morality,
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  ethics or sin. It is entirely about physical
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  reality. Wow.
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  I mean in early classical Greek if you read someone like the
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  ancient poet Haciud, the word carries 0 moral weight.
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  It meant laden with care, or sorrowful or unhappy.
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  So it's not a bad person, it's just a sad or exhausted person.
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  Yes, precisely. And linguists point out that the
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  Greeks actually had a brilliant way of distinguishing this
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  original physical meaning from the moral usage that developed
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  much later on. They used a different accent
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  mark in their pronunciation. Wait, really?
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  Yeah, they did. So the way you stress the
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  syllables changed the entire definition of the word.
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  That is right, Greek is a pitch accent language.
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  So if they place the accent on the 1st syllable making it a
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  proper oxytonin, which means the stress falls on the anti
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  penultimate syllable and you pronounce it poniros.
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  I meant sorrowful or burdensome or toilsome.
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  Poniros OK. Right.
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  You were describing someone who's just crushed by the weight
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  of their daily labor. You were not commenting on their
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  character at all. You were commenting on their
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  harsh circumstances. But if the accent shifted to the
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  final syllable, it eventually came to mean something entirely
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  different. That is such a vivid linguistic
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  detail. So the actual titch of your
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  voice shifted depending on whether you were talking about
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  someone who was just having a terrible, exhausting day in the
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  fields versus someone who was actively malicious.
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  It is a massive. Shift.
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  It is wild that a word we so closely associate with the
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  darkest, most rebellious parts of the human soul started out
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  describing a guy who just needs a nap and a good meal.
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  Right, he's just tired. But when you look at the
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  classical literature, it didn't stay restricted to human
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  exhaustion for very long. The texts show it started being
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  applied to objects too, right? Like things and animals that
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  'cause you trouble. Yes, the usage broadened a lot
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  in classical Greek literature. The word became associated with
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  anything that causes trouble, brings sorrow, or actively
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  frustrates human flourishing. Like what kind of things?
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  Well, Plato, for instance, uses it to describe a bad dog.
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  A bad dog. Yeah, Now he does not mean an
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  evil dog in a moral sense. He means a dog that is
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  untrained, dangerous, constantly barking and causing intense
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  grief for its owner. The dog is poneros because it
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  makes your life harder. Oh, I.
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  See, Aristotle provides another fantastic example.
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  He notes it's used for noxious smoke from burning coal.
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  Coal smoke. Right.
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  Think about an ancient blacksmith working in a poorly
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  ventilated space. The smoke that billows off that
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  fire is not just unpleasant, it is suffocating.
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  It burns your retinas. It chokes your lungs.
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  It forces you to run out of the room gasping for air.
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  That sounds awful. Aristotle used the word to
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  describe that specific kind of noxious smoke, because the smoke
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  is actively fighting against your body's ability to function.
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  So it is moving from the person experiencing the hardship to the
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  thing causing the hardship. Spot on.
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  You find it describing an unlucky voyage at sea where the
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  weather is fighting against you, or a poorly functioning physical
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  sense. Like your eyesight?
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  Yes, Plato writes about a pony area of the eyes.
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  This is not a metaphor for greed.
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  Yet you need the literal physical affliction or sickness
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  of the eye that prevents it from seeing clearly.
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  Your eyes are poneros If they are failing you, the word meant
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  unserviceable, unfit, or badly contrived.
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  If your farming tools broke in the middle of a harvest, they
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  were a poneros. If your crops failed because of
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  a drought, the situation was pun arrows.
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  OK, I am tracking with that progression from physical
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  exhaustion to the tools or animals or elements that 'cause
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  you physical frustration, right? But then we see this massive
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  aggressive social shift in the Greek texts.
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  The word gets weaponized by the upper class.
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  It becomes a vicious class based insult.
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  It really gets. The aristocrats in ancient
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  Athens had a very specific, highly arrogant phrase for
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  themselves. They called themselves the Kaloy
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  Kagatoy, which translates to the beautiful and the good.
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  They consider themselves the absolute peak of human society.
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  Oh, they definitely did. And they started throwing the
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  word ponaros at the plebeians, the commoners, the laborers.
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  That is a crucial development in the history of Western thought.
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  The social elite began to equate physical poverty and a lack of
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  aristocratic education with a deficiency of character.
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  It is a highly prejudice worldview.
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  Yeah, extremely. If you worked with your hands
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  for a living, if you use the rough jargon of the marketplace
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  instead of quoting Homer, if you lacked the refined manners of
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  the upper class, you were labeled poneros.
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  You were considered socially based.
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  Just because you're a poor? Yes, the aristocrats assume that
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  because your life was filled with menial toil, your mind and
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  your morals must be equally menial.
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  And from that social snobbery a severe political shift occurred.
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  The word evolved to describe demagogues, sycophants, and
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  temple robbers. The prevailing Greek philosophy
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  held that a politically useless citizen was a private menace.
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  What do you mean by a politically useless citizen?
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  Well, in the Athenian mindset, the highest good was
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  contributing to the polis, the city, state, through philosophy,
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  rhetoric, military leadership or the arts.
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  High society stuff. Right.
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  If you were just a subsistence farmer or a day laborer, you are
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  not contributing to the state in a refined, aristocratic manner.
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  Therefore, your character was inherently suspect.
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  That is so wild. The political failings of a
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  person, their inability to participate in the high level
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  governance of the city became completely indistinguishable
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  from their private ethics in the eyes of the elite.
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  The porn Eros was viewed as a parasite on the Commonwealth.
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  You know, I love looking at how language evolves like this
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  because it reveals so much about human nature.
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  It is actually so similar to the English word villain.
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  Oh, that is a great comparison. Think about the mechanism there.
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  Originally. In medieval times, a villain was
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  literally just a farmhand. It was a peasant working on a
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  villa or a feudal estate. It had absolutely 0 moral
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  connotation. You were just a guy who raked
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  hay. Right, just a worker.
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  But because of intense aristocratic snobbery, the
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  nobles up in the castle assumed that peasants were inherently
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  base, untrustworthy, and malicious.
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  They looked down from the walls and thought those dirty people
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  down there must have dirty souls.
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  Yeah, that's it. So over centuries of usage,
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  villain morphed into our definitive word for a malicious,
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  evil antagonist. The exact same sociological
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  mechanism happened in ancient Greece with Poe Noros.
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  It is a direct parallel. But this raises a massive
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  question. If the Greeks basically decided
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  that poor equals evil, doesn't that put them on a huge
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  collision course with the Jewish scriptures?
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  The Old Testament is constantly defending the poor and the
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  marginalized. How did they reconcile
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  translating their Bible into a language that hated poor people?
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  You have hit on a major explosive collision of
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  worldviews. They are operating in completely
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  different universes. Yeah, it seems like it.
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  The Greeks, largely speaking, viewed moral failure as a lack
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  of education or a lack of refined class.
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  For them, virtue was tied completely to status, intellect,
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  and civic contribution. But the Bible doesn't say that
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  at all. No, not at all.
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  The biblical texts locate wickedness entirely in the human
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  will, completely regardless of your bank account or your social
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  standing. In the biblical framework, a
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  wealthy, highly educated king sitting on a throne can be
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  utterly, hopelessly wicked, and a destitute beggar covered in
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  sores can be intensely righteous.
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  The biblical worldview completely severs the Greek
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  connection between poverty and sin.
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  So when the Greek language was adopted by the Jewish people,
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  they had to take this word, which was soaked in aristocratic
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  snobbery, and completely rewire its internal logic.
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  They had to fix it. Yes, they had to rewire it to
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  fit a theology where God, not the Athenian elite, is the sole
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  arbiter of good and evil. Let's pause there and talk about
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  that rewiring process, because that brings us to the Old
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  Testament lens we have to set the stage in Alexandria, Egypt,
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  a couple of centuries before Christ.
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  It is a critical time period. You have a huge Jewish diaspora
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  living under Greek cultural dominance.
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  They need their Hebrew scriptures translated into the
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  common trade language of the day, which is Greek.
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  This translation ever becomes known as the Septuagint.
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  Right, the Greek Old Testament. Tradition says 70 scholars took
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  on this monumental task. But think about the
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  philosophical minefield they had to walk across.
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  They are taking ancient covenantal Hebrew concepts and
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  trying to pour them into Greek containers.
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  It was not easy. When it came to translating the
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  Hebrew words for evil, specifically raw and raw, they
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  chose poneria and poneros. Now the historical records show
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  that the physical non moral sense of the word does remain in
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  the Greek Old Testament. It doesn't vanish entirely.
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  It does remain, and it functions very similarly to how Plato or
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  Aristotle used it for things that are broken or dangerous.
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  Give me some examples of that for.
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  Instance, in the book of Leviticus you see the word used
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  for cultically useless animals. This sacrificial system demanded
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  A spotless lamb. If an animal had a massive
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  blemish, a broken leg or a disease, it could not be
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  sacrificed. To so it was rejected.
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  Yes, it was Planero's fit for use.
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  The prophet Jeremiah uses it to describe a basket of bad, rotten
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  figs that are impossible to eat. Prophet Ezekiel uses it for
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  harmful wild beasts that ravaged the countryside.
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  In all these instances, it still describes things that are
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  functionally ruined, dangerous, or causing severe hardship.
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  OK, so a rotten fig is not morally evil.
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  It is just a terrible fig. It makes you sick.
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  Precisely, and the Septuagint also retains the sense of
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  describing misfortune or disaster, but the translators
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  give it a radical theological twist.
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  How so? The text uses this Greek word to
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  describe the massive calamity or disaster brought about by God
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  itself. This is what theologians
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  sometimes call God's alien work of judgement.
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  OK, that sounds intense. It is.
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  For example, if you read the prophets Amos or Isaiah, you
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  find shocking statements declaring that God brings evil
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  or calamity upon a city. The Greek word used by the
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  translators there is panoros. It means disaster, severe
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  judgement, the breaking down of physical security, armies
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  invading, walls collapsing. But it's always frames the
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  consequence of divine justice. So it's not arbitrary.
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  Right, but the moral revolution of the word is the most
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  significant aspect of this translation effort.
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  The Old Testament strips away all the Greek social class
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  associations. Good and evil are no longer
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  measured by whether you are a wealthy Athenian aristocrat or a
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  poor marketplace vendor. That is a relief.
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  They are measured entirely by God's commands.
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  Evil is defined fundamentally as opposition to God, opposition to
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  His revealed truth, and act of rebellion against His will.
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  And the texts highlight that the Old Testament zeroes in on the
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  inner part of man as the engine of this wickedness.
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  It is not about outward civic usefulness like the Greeks
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  thought. It is about the internal
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  disposition. We read constantly about the
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  evil heart, the evil inclination, the evil eye.
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  The corruption is internal. But I had to push back on
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  something you mentioned a moment ago.
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  Sure, go ahead. If the Septuagint uses the exact
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  same Greek word koneros to describe human moral wickedness
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  and also the disaster or evil that God brings in judgment upon
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  a city, how do we keep from confusing the 2?
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  That is a great question. If I am reading Amos and it says
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  God brings paneros, how do I avoid making God the author of
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  sin? Does the biblical text give us a
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  clear boundary? That is a vital theological
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  distinction, and you are right to ask it.
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  The Hebrew context surrounding the Greek translation provides
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  the boundary. The biblical writers go to great
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  lengths to differentiate between the consequence of sin and the
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  root of sin. OK, unpack that for me.
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  The consequence of sin is the calamity, the disaster, the
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  hardship orchestrated by divine justice.
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  The root of sin is the internal rebellion generated by human
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  willful disobedience. I see.
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  When God brings evil upon a city in the prophetic literature, he
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  is bringing temporal judgement. He is acting as a righteous
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  judge, handing down a sentence. He is orchestrating A Panero
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  situation, a disastrous, burdensome, terrifying physical
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  reality for that city. But he is not sinning.
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  Right. When humans commit evil, they
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  are generating moral rebellion from an unholy will.
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  God is entirely free of moral defect.
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  His judgments are perfect and proportional.
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  Human wickedness, however, stems from a corrupted will that is
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  willfully turned away from the Creator.
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  The literary context always dictates whether the word refers
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  to the righteous application of a penalty by a judge or the
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  unrighteous rebellion of the human heart.
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  That makes total sense when you frame it like that.
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  It is the difference between a judge handing down a severe
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  devastating sentence which is a massive hardship, A genuinely
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  bad day for the criminal who is going to prison and the
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  criminals actual malicious act that warranted the sentence in
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  the first place. Yes, that is a perfect way to
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  look at. It the judge is not committing a
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  crime by issuing the sentence. This heavy focus on the internal
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  heart and the will brings us perfectly into the fascinating
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  historical period between the Old and New Testament.
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  The intertestamental period. Right.
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  If human beings have this internal gravity constantly
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  pulling them toward rebellion, the Jewish writers in the
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  centuries just before Jesus arrived start to ask massive
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  questions about how that gravity works.
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  They intensify this focus on the internal human will, and they
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  also introduce a heavy focus on the influence of the spiritual
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  realm. The intertestamental period is
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  incredibly rich for linguistic and theological development.
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  If we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the
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  documents recovered from the Qumran community, we see a
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  fascinating shift. Tell us about Qumran.
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  For context, the Qumran community was a strict ascetic
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  Jewish sect living out in the harsh desert near the Dead Sea.
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  They separated themselves from mainstream society because they
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  believe the temple in Jerusalem was corrupted.
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  So they were very isolated. Very isolated.
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  When you read their texts, you see them radicalizing the law.
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  Their documents demand that members keep away from all evil
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  and cleave entirely to all good. They frame poinieria not just as
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  a sequence of bad actions you might do on a Tuesday, but as a
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  complete totalizing disposition of the soul.
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  A comprehensive view of human nature.
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  Yes. Then if you look at the rabbinic
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  writings from around this era and slightly later, you see the
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  formalization of what they call the two ways, the good way and
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  the bad way. The Rabbi's place a massive
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  focus on a concept called the Yetzerhara, which translates to
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  the evil impulse. The evil impulse.
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  OK. They define this impulse as the
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  human mind or sensual desire directed intensely toward
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  ungodly, earthly and corruptible things.
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  It is the internal gravity pulling the human soul away from
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  the divine law. Let.
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  Me try out an analogy here to see if I am grasping the
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  yatsurhara. It sounds like we are not just
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  talking about a person who occasionally makes a bad choice.
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  It is more like a broken compass.
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  Oh, I like that. It is not just that the compass
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  occasionally points the wrong way because you bumped it.
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  The magnetic pole itself has shifted.
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  Every single decision, every instinct, is being actively
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  pulled off course by this internal gravity of
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  self-interest and rebellion. That is a highly accurate way to
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  put it. And this maps remarkably well on
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  to what later Protestant theologians working from
• 17:34
  documents like the Westminster Confession, would call total
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  depravity. It isn't that every person is as
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  bad as they could possibly be in every given moment, committing
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  every possible crime. It's that the corruption extends
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  to every faculty. The mind, the will, the
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  affections. The compass is entirely
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  compromised. That analogy of this shifting
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  magnetic pole is very accurate to the intertestamental Jewish
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  view of the yet Sahara, and yes, it sets the stage for later
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  Reformed theology regarding the bondage of the will.
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  That is so interesting. The Jewish writer saw this
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  impulse as an invasive force that infects the entire human
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  operating system. But they didn't stop at the
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  boundaries of human psychology. They went further.
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  They did. You also have the
• 18:16
  Pseudepigrapha, which are these ancient Jewish texts written
• 18:19
  under the pen names of famous biblical figures like Enoch or
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  the 12 sons of Jacob. In these texts we see a massive
• 18:26
  rise in demonology. The testaments of the 12
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  Patriarchs, for example, describe restless evil spirits
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  that actively assault humans and drive them towards specific
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  sins. I found one detail in the
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  research absolutely fascinating regarding this.
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  The text describes what it calls the four evil spirits of wine.
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  Oh yes, that section it. Lists them as desire,
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  excitement, extravagance, and filthy avarice.
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  That is a highly moralizing interpretation of intoxication.
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  They are mapping spiritual demonic forces directly onto
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  human behavioral vices. They are looking at a guy who
• 19:00
  drinks too much and wastes all his money and saying there is a
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  spirit of extravagance attacking him.
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  They are. Indeed, they are taking the
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  internal yetzerhara and externalizing it into a cosmic
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  battle. And alongside that highly
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  spiritualized view, you have Hellenistic Judaism championed
• 19:17
  by brilliant figures like Philo of Alexandria.
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  Right, Philo. Philo attempts to mix Greek
• 19:22
  Stoic philosophy with Jewish theological thought.
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  He adopts the Stoic idea that the physical material body is
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  evil and contemptible when compared to the purity of divine
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  immaterial mysteries. So.
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  He leans into the Greek stuff a bit.
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  A bit, yes, but crucially, he retains the biblical view of
• 19:39
  morality over the classical Greece view.
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  He insists that virtue cannot be inherited through noble birth or
• 19:45
  wealth. He explicitly argues that even
• 19:48
  slaves can be righteous. Which is a massive slap in the
• 19:50
  face to the old Greek aristocrats we talked about
• 19:52
  earlier. Absolutely.
• 19:54
  In doing so, Philo uses Greek philosophical categories to
• 19:57
  prove the old classical Greek class based insults entirely
• 20:01
  wrong. I love that.
• 20:02
  Imagine you are a wealthy, educated Greek aristocrat in the
• 20:05
  1st century, and you call your uneducated slave ponaros
• 20:09
  socially useless base lacking refinement.
• 20:13
  But Philo and the Jewish tradition flipped the script
• 20:15
  entirely. They argue that the slave might
• 20:17
  be poonaros in social standing but utterly righteous before
• 20:20
  God, whereas the aristocrat with all his money and education,
• 20:23
  might possess A terrifying poonoria of the soul.
• 20:26
  It was a complete revolution of human value.
• 20:28
  It really was. I want to ask you about that
• 20:30
  connection between the demonic and human vice we see in the
• 20:33
  pseudepigrapha. When a text blames evil spirits
• 20:37
  for human actions like extravagance or filthy avarice,
• 20:41
  what is actually going on there? Are they creating a convenient
• 20:44
  excuse for bad behavior? Like, hey, the devil made me buy
• 20:47
  this wildly expensive chariot, I couldn't help myself.
• 20:50
  Or are they actually trying to illustrate how invasive and
• 20:53
  aggressive human depravity really is?
• 20:56
  That is a perceptive question, and it is a tension that runs
• 20:59
  right through this era in intertestamental Judaism.
• 21:03
  They were not trying to negate human responsibility.
• 21:06
  They held firmly that humans are entirely responsible for
• 21:10
  yielding to the yetzer hara, the evil impulse.
• 21:12
  OK, so you are still on the hook.
• 21:14
  You are definitely still on the hook.
• 21:15
  However, by introducing the language of hostile spiritual
• 21:18
  forces, they were attempting to illustrate that humans are quite
• 21:21
  literally under siege. They recognize that temptation
• 21:25
  often feels external, aggressive, and highly organized
• 21:28
  it. Doesn't just feel like a passive
• 21:29
  thing. Right.
• 21:30
  It doesn't just feel like a momentary lapse in judgement, it
• 21:33
  feels like you are being hunted. By framing covetousness or
• 21:37
  extravagance as being driven by spirits, they were elevating
• 21:41
  Punuria to a cosmic issue. It is not just a bad personal
• 21:45
  habit or a slate character flaw. It is a participation in a
• 21:48
  massive cosmic rebellion against the creator.
• 21:52
  You are aligning your will with an anti God agenda.
• 21:55
  Which brings us right to the threshold of the New Testament.
• 21:58
  If human beings have this internal gravity pulling them
• 22:01
  toward rebellion, and if this rebellion is part of a larger
• 22:04
  cosmic war, that sets the perfect stage for how Jesus and
• 22:07
  the apostles diagnosed the human condition.
• 22:10
  It sets the stage perfectly. When we open the Gospels, we see
• 22:12
  a very stark contrast established immediately.
• 22:15
  The text asserts unequivocally that only God is good.
• 22:18
  Humans, by contrast, are described generally as poneroy,
• 22:21
  as evil. Yes, that is a baseline
• 22:23
  assumption in the text. Jesus says to his own disciples,
• 22:26
  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts.
• 22:30
  There is absolutely no flattering of human nature in
• 22:33
  these texts. And when Jesus confronts the
• 22:35
  religious elite of his day, the Pharisees, he calls them an evil
• 22:40
  generation. Yes, and the specific nature of
• 22:42
  their wickedness is highly revealing, especially when we
• 22:45
  consider the Reformed understanding of the will.
• 22:48
  Their poniria consists specifically of their obstinacy.
• 22:52
  Their stubbornness. Right.
• 22:54
  It is their firm, calculated decision against God's living
• 22:57
  Word and His explicit offer of salvation standing right in
• 23:00
  front of them. It is not that they are breaking
• 23:02
  civic laws. They are highly educated.
• 23:04
  They are socially elite. They keep the Sabbath.
• 23:07
  They ties their spices. They look like great guys.
• 23:09
  In the eyes of the classical Greeks, they might have been
• 23:11
  considered excellent citizens, but their evil is a resolute
• 23:15
  hardening of the will against divine revelation.
• 23:18
  Their compass is pointing aggressively away from the
• 23:20
  truth. This internal hidden focus is
• 23:22
  debated heavily in a specific phrase used by Jesus in Matthew
• 23:26
  chapter 6 and Luke Chapter 11. The phrase is the evil eye.
• 23:31
  The historical commentaries detail a massive interpretive
• 23:34
  debate regarding what this phrase actually means in this
• 23:37
  original context. Does it mean a physically sick
• 23:40
  eye or a morally covetous eye? I love digging into these
• 23:43
  interpretive debates because it forces us to look at how
• 23:46
  language actually functions. Scholars layout five really
• 23:49
  solid arguments for the idea that Jesus is just talking about
• 23:53
  physical sickness, remembering that Plato used poniuria to
• 23:56
  describe actual eye disease, right?
• 23:58
  Medical usage. 1st, the physical body is explicitly mentioned in
• 24:02
  the passage. Jesus says the eye is the lamp
• 24:04
  of the body. Second, there is a contest drawn
• 24:07
  between internal light and external light, which sounds
• 24:09
  like biological vision. Third, the classical medical
• 24:12
  usage of the word supports a physical ailment.
• 24:15
  It seems like a very strong logical case that Jesus is just
• 24:18
  giving a biological metaphor about having healthy vision
• 24:21
  versus being physically blind. It sounds very convincing on the
• 24:24
  surface. But why would Jesus suddenly
• 24:26
  give a medical lecture on optometry in the middle of the
• 24:29
  Sermon on the Mount, which is entirely about money, anxiety,
• 24:33
  and trusting God? The mechanism here isn't
• 24:36
  biological blindness. The counter arguments show that
• 24:39
  the Hebrew idiom strongly supports the evil eye, meaning a
• 24:42
  stingy, greedy or envious gaze. The Hebrew idiom is the deciding
• 24:47
  factor for the vast majority of scholars, and you are right to
• 24:49
  point out the immediate context of the Sermon on the Mount in
• 24:52
  the Old Testament, specifically in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and
• 24:56
  in later rabbinic literature. Having an evil eye is a well
• 24:59
  known established cultural idiom for being a miser, for being
• 25:03
  greedy, or for looking upon the wealth of others with bitter
• 25:06
  envy. It is a known phrase.
• 25:08
  Very well known. While the Greek word poneros
• 25:10
  could technically mean a diseased physical eye in a
• 25:13
  medical textbook, the cultural context of a Jewish rabbi
• 25:16
  speaking to a Jewish audience brands the idiomatic meaning.
• 25:20
  The eye is the lamp of the body, and if your eye is greedy, if it
• 25:23
  looks at resources with an envious hoarding mindset, your
• 25:26
  entire inner life is filled with darkness.
• 25:28
  Let's unpack the mechanism of this with an analogy to make it
• 25:31
  crystal clear. Think of a miser sitting at a
• 25:35
  table in a restaurant, scrutinizing a bill down to the
• 25:38
  last penny, making sure he does not tip a single fraction of a
• 25:42
  percent more than is legally required.
• 25:44
  OK, I can picture that. His physical retinas and corneas
• 25:47
  are functioning perfectly. He can read the tiny fine print
• 25:51
  at the bottom of the receipt just fine.
• 25:53
  His biological vision is 2020, but his soul is squinting.
• 25:57
  His soul is squinting. That is good.
• 25:59
  His vision is evil because the way he looks at the world, the
• 26:02
  way he looks at resources, the way he calculates the value of
• 26:05
  the server standing next to his table, is entirely filtered
• 26:09
  through the lens of greed. The mechanism of the evil eye
• 26:13
  alters how you perceive the value of other humans.
• 26:16
  That analogy captures the essence of the Hebrew idiom
• 26:19
  perfectly. Your biological eyes work, but
• 26:22
  your spiritual perception is utterly corrupted by
• 26:25
  self-interest, and we see this confirmed over and over
• 26:28
  throughout the rest of the New Testament.
• 26:29
  Where else does it show up? In various epistles, ponuria is
• 26:32
  frequently paired in vice lists with pleonexia, which is the
• 26:35
  Greek word for covetousness or avarice.
• 26:38
  The biblical authors continually link the concept of wickedness
• 26:41
  with greed and the hoarding of resources.
• 26:43
  They go hand in hand. They do, yeah.
• 26:45
  This proves that the way we look at the material world, how we
• 26:49
  value earthly possessions over people or over God, reveals the
• 26:53
  actual functional depravity of the inward heart.
• 26:57
  Furthermore, in the book of Colossians and in the writings
• 26:59
  of John, human works are called evil specifically because they
• 27:02
  oppose revealed truth. It is an active, conscious
• 27:06
  rebellion. It is not passive.
• 27:08
  Right. And the writer of Hebrews talks
• 27:10
  about an evil conscience. This is a conscience that has
• 27:12
  become so calloused and corrupted that it causes a
• 27:15
  person to apostatize, to consciously turn away from the
• 27:18
  living God. The internal compass is not just
• 27:20
  broken, it is actively pointing S instead of north, and the
• 27:24
  person is willingly following it.
• 27:26
  So we have this vivid, terrifying picture of human
• 27:30
  depravity involving a deep internal rebellion of the will.
• 27:34
  The compass is broken, the eye is greedy, the heart is
• 27:36
  obstinate. But the New Testament texts do
• 27:39
  not stop at the edge of the human mind.
• 27:41
  They point to an external source that perfectly embodies this
• 27:45
  rebellion. The ultimate source.
• 27:47
  Right. This brings us to a crucial
• 27:48
  question. If we have this internal gravity
• 27:51
  pulling us away from God, did we invent that gravity ourselves?
• 27:54
  Or is there a larger cosmic origin point for this disease?
• 27:58
  That is where the texts introduce an actual persona.
• 28:01
  The New Testament uses the singular masculine form of our
• 28:04
  word ho ponoros as a specific, terrifying title for the devil.
• 28:09
  The linguistic tracking here across the Gospels is quite
• 28:12
  revealing. If we look at the famous parable
• 28:14
  of the sower where a farmer throws seed and birds come and
• 28:16
  snatch it away, we can see how the Gospel writers shift their
• 28:19
  terminology to describe the enemy.
• 28:21
  Oh, that is a great example. Let's look at that.
• 28:23
  When describing the entity that snatches the seed of the word
• 28:26
  away from the path, Mark uses the traditional Hebrew term
• 28:29
  Satan, which literally means the adversary or the accuser.
• 28:34
  Luke uses the Greek term the devil diabolos, which means the
• 28:37
  slanderer or the one who throws things apart.
• 28:40
  Diabolos. OK, but Matthew chooses a
• 28:41
  different path. He uses Hoponoros, the Evil 1.
• 28:45
  He takes the abstract concept of wickedness, the entire history
• 28:49
  of this word we've been discussing, and personifies it
• 28:51
  in this singular masculine title.
• 28:54
  He makes it a name. He does.
• 28:55
  He's saying if you want to know what pure, unadulterated Ponoria
• 28:59
  looks like, look at this entity. Similarly, in his first epistle,
• 29:03
  the Apostle John states a staggering claim that the whole
• 29:07
  world lies in the power of the evil 1.
• 29:10
  The concept of Punoria reaches its absolute apex in this
• 29:13
  figure. It is The Fountainhead of the
• 29:14
  Rebellion. Which brings us to one of the
• 29:16
  most famous and perhaps most heavily debated uses of this
• 29:19
  word in all of history, the Lord's Prayer.
• 29:23
  We have to look at the historical and confessional
• 29:25
  debate over Matthew chapter 6, verse 13.
• 29:27
  This is a huge debate. Jesus instructs his followers to
• 29:30
  pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
• 29:35
  Ponoru. The massive grammatical debate
• 29:38
  which has raged for centuries is whether this specific Greek word
• 29:42
  is in the neuter form, meaning deliver us from evil as an
• 29:46
  abstract concept or a general state of danger, or if it is in
• 29:51
  the masculine form, meaning deliver us from the evil 1
• 29:54
  referring specifically to the devil.
• 29:56
  It is a tricky grammar issue. Because in the genitive case in
• 30:00
  Greek, the masculine and the neuter look identical.
• 30:03
  You can't tell just by looking at the spelling.
• 30:05
  No, you really can't. It is a grammatical ambiguity
• 30:07
  that has literally split the church historically.
• 30:09
  How so? Well, the Eastern Church has
• 30:11
  traditionally leaned heavily toward the masculine
• 30:14
  interpretation. They focus the petition directly
• 30:16
  on spiritual warfare, personalizing the conflict.
• 30:19
  For them, the prayer is an explicit cry for deliverance
• 30:22
  from Satan, the architect of lives.
• 30:24
  Deliver us from the Evil 1, right?
• 30:26
  The Western church, however, has traditionally leaned toward the
• 30:29
  neuter interpretation. Major Protestant reformers like
• 30:33
  Martin Luther and John Calvin, who's thought heavily influences
• 30:36
  documents like the Westminster Confession, argued vigorously
• 30:40
  for the broader neuter sense. Did they not believe in the
• 30:43
  devil? Oh, they definitely did.
• 30:45
  They did not exclude the devil by any means.
• 30:47
  Rather, they argue that evil is a comprehensive umbrella term.
• 30:51
  It incorporates the devil, yes, but it also includes the coming
• 30:55
  eschatological tribulation, physical dangers, sickness, and,
• 30:59
  crucially, our own daily internal sin.
• 31:01
  It covers everything. Yes, for them, praying for
• 31:04
  deliverance from evil covers the entire spectrum of the curse,
• 31:08
  from the demonic to the biological.
• 31:10
  And the historical documents provide some really fascinating
• 31:13
  backup for that broader, more comprehensive interpretation.
• 31:17
  Archaeologists discovered something called the Janisa
• 31:19
  fragments. Let's explain what those.
• 31:21
  Are that is a great discovery. In the late 19th century,
• 31:24
  scholars discovered a massive collection of ancient Jewish
• 31:27
  manuscript fragments hidden away in a storeroom a janisa in a
• 31:32
  synagogue in Cairo, Egypt. These documents preserve
• 31:36
  everyday Jewish life and liturgy from over 1000 years ago,
• 31:40
  reflecting much older traditions.
• 31:42
  They are an incredible window into the past.
• 31:44
  They really are. They show that Jewish morning
• 31:46
  prayers from around that era contain explicit pleas to be
• 31:50
  delivered from every evil thing, from bad dreams, from severe
• 31:54
  illnesses, and from the yetzerhara, the evil impulse we
• 31:58
  talked about earlier. Right, that daily struggle.
• 32:00
  They were praying for a broad, all-encompassing deliverance
• 32:03
  from every facet of a broken world which seems to strongly
• 32:06
  support the wider neuter interpretation of the Lord's
• 32:09
  Prayer. It is a cry to be rescued from
• 32:12
  the whole catastrophe of the fall.
• 32:13
  It really supports the Westminster framework.
• 32:15
  It does. But looking at all of this,
• 32:17
  looking at the cosmic scale of this rebellion, I have a massive
• 32:20
  theological question for you and for our listener to consider.
• 32:23
  Lay it on me. If the biblical text is willing
• 32:25
  to give Satan the very title The Evil 1, and if the apostle John
• 32:29
  asserts that the whole world lies in his grip, does
• 32:32
  acknowledging that massive level of demonic influence diminish
• 32:35
  human responsibility? Do we get to blame our own evil
• 32:40
  heart of unbelief that the book of Hebrews mentions on the
• 32:43
  devil? That is the crucial razor edge
• 32:46
  tension of New Testament theology.
• 32:48
  The texts synthesize this material by holding both
• 32:51
  realities simultaneously, without ever letting one negate
• 32:55
  the other. So it's both.
• 32:56
  It is. The New Testament writers view
• 32:58
  humanity as captive, yes, but as willingly captive.
• 33:02
  Acknowledging the severe influence of the Evil 1 does not
• 33:05
  absolve the human will, because the corrupted human will
• 33:08
  naturally, instinctively resonates with the rebellion of
• 33:11
  the adversary. We actually want what he offers.
• 33:13
  That is the tragic reality. We are not innocent bystanders
• 33:16
  being forced at gunpoint to sin against our will.
• 33:19
  Our internal ponaria actively aligns with the external
• 33:22
  ponaros. We love the very things the
• 33:24
  enemy offers. Therefore, the deliverance
• 33:26
  requested in the Lord's Prayer is required on 2 separate
• 33:29
  fronts. External and internal.
• 33:31
  Yes, we absolutely need deliverance from the cosmic
• 33:34
  adversary who prowls around like a roaring lion, but we equally
• 33:39
  need deliverance from the terrifying depravity residing in
• 33:42
  our own human conscience. The rescue operation must
• 33:45
  conquer the tyrant outside the city walls, and it must cure the
• 33:48
  treason inside the city gates. The tyrant outside and the
• 33:51
  treason inside that brings this whole massive discussion into
• 33:55
  such sharp, terrifying focus. It really clarifies things.
• 33:59
  We have covered an incredible amount of ground today, digging
• 34:02
  through centuries of linguistics and theology.
• 34:05
  Let's trace the trajectory for our listener one more time to
• 34:07
  solidify the picture. That is a good idea.
• 34:10
  We started with the word pannieria that began quite
• 34:13
  literally in the ancient Greek dirt.
• 34:15
  It was used to describe heavy physical toil, exhaustion,
• 34:18
  sweat, and things that just do not work right, like a broken
• 34:21
  tool or noxious smoke. Just a miserable Tuesday in the
• 34:24
  ancient world. Right then it mutated into a
• 34:27
  vicious weapon of class warfare, hurled by wealthy aristocrats at
• 34:31
  the poor peasants working the fields.
• 34:34
  Then it was completely reclaimed, inverted and
• 34:37
  redefined by the Hebrew Scriptures to describe an
• 34:39
  internal moral rebellion against the Creator, regardless of
• 34:42
  social class. And finally, it became the
• 34:45
  defining absolute title for the devil himself, the ultimate
• 34:48
  enemy of God. It is a remarkable semantic
• 34:51
  shift that perfectly mirrors the grand biblical narrative itself.
• 34:55
  It moves from the physical groaning of a cursed creation,
• 34:59
  addresses the bitter social fractures of humanity, locates
• 35:02
  the true underlying problem in the sinful human heart, and
• 35:05
  identifies the final spiritual enemy orchestrating the
• 35:08
  rebellion. The linguistics carry the
• 35:10
  theology beautifully. We really do.
• 35:12
  And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you with a
• 35:14
  final thought to Mull over something that bridges the gap
• 35:16
  between the dirt and the theology.
• 35:18
  If the root of the word for our deepest, most severe moral guilt
• 35:21
  before God, ponuria, is the exact same root as the word for
• 35:25
  our heaviest physical suffering, our sweat and our daily toil
• 35:29
  ponos, then a true rescue operation from heaven could not
• 35:33
  stop at only forgiving our bad behavior.
• 35:36
  Right, it has to go deeper. It could not just be a legal
• 35:38
  transaction, it would have to reach all the way down into the
• 35:40
  dirt to cure a physical suffering, to wipe away our
• 35:42
  exhaustion, and to heal our physical sorrow as well.
• 35:46
  Deliverance from evil means deliverance from the whole
• 35:48
  broken system. Thank you so much for joining us
• 35:50
  today. We look forward to having you
• 35:52
  with us next time on Reform Thinking.