Lucifer's True History of Everything
Sep 12, 06 04:55 PM
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The True Life of Jesus, cont.
Reaching Egypt, Joseph and Mary found a riverside inn with vacancies, and they rented a room there in exchange for a small chunk of frankincense.
That evening, in their room overlooking the Nile, as a full moon rose over the pyramids, Joseph said to Mary, "Darling, let us now get to know one another, at last."
But the angel Gabriel appeared in their room at that romantic moment and said, "No, Joseph, not yet! You must now turn around and go back to Israel! For King Herod, who sought the child's life, is dead." And it was true! That very afternoon, in Jerusalem, while stunned parents throughout Judaea were still dealing with the dead-baby situation, Yahveh finally killed King Herod, to teach him a lesson!
Mary, whose name meant Rebel or Sea of bitterness, was in no mood for another long donkey ride.
Joseph knew better than to argue with God. "Pack up the donkey," he said. "We're going home."
I never saw Mary's saddle sores. Neither did Joseph. But he heard about them. He heard about them all the way from Egypt to Gaza to Jerusalem to Galilee. By the time they finally reached the village of Nazareth, having been gone for ten weeks, the Blessed Virgin was not a happy traveler. There were cross words.
Joseph said to her, "Your father, whoever he was, sure gave you the right name! 'Mary'! What a rebel! What a sea of bitterness!"
Seventy years later, Saint Matthew in his Gospel explained that God performed all of these shenanigans – the trip to Bethlehem, the birth in a barn, the extra four years for Herod, the baby-slaughter, the round trip to Egypt – just so "that what was spoken of the LORD by the prophet Hosea might be fulfilled: 'Out of Egypt I called My Son'" (Matt. 2:15).
Mary never learned that the prophet Hosea was to blame for her ordeal, and it's a good thing: because if the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven had known that the trip to Egypt was undertaken for the sole purpose of making Hosea's prophecy come true, when she later died and went to Heaven, Mary would have kicked Hosea in the shins for a payback.
When quoting the Old Testament prophets, Saint Matthew always omits phrasing that may be too wordy or unclear, style-wise. But actually, this time he was just jerking everyone's chain. Here is Hosea's prediction in full: "When he was a child, I loved him. Out of Egypt I called My Son. But the more I called him, the more he went from Me. Will he not just return to the land of Egypt, and will not the Assyrians rule over him, since he has refused to repent?" (Hosea 11:1-5). Saint Matthew determined Hosea 11 was a prophecy about Jesus and not about someone else because that is the only Old Testament passage in which Yahveh ever speaks the phrase, "My Son."
Ignoring Hosea's predictions of a bad-boy Son who returned to Egypt and got whupped by the Assyrians, Mary and Joseph settled in Nazareth, in Joseph's house – not just because Nazareth happened to be their hometown, but also (says Matthew) "so that it might be fulfilled what was spoken of the Messiah by the other prophets, that 'He shall be called a Nazarene'" (Matthew 2:23).
FYI: This prediction that the Messiah would be called a "Nazarene" (a person from Nazareth) is one of Scripture's so-called "lost prophecies." A "lost prophecy" is any accurate prediction which, due to a casual oversight of the holy Ghost, never got recorded in the Old Testament; and the "lost" prophecies are the very same predictions that were fulfilled. Luckily, we have Saint Matthew to thank for reporting ("inventing" would be too strong a word) lost prophecies; without whose report, Christians would not have known that several ancient prophecies of the Messiah actually did come true.
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 04:55 PM
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