The Orthodox Bible
HOW GREECE FAILED GOD
Get this clear. The modern phenomena of believers walking to church with a bible and studying it at home is an Evangelical and Protestant freedom and idea, the Orthodox Church never had it, or tried to achieve it. They opposed it. They never even put together a proper bible until 300 years after the Reformation, and even then it was not properly accurate.
Racism
The Jews became very racist, and taught a Calvinistic type heresy that the Jews were "chosen for salvation" as if God was not saving millions of Gentiles in the Old Covenant. In fact God chose Israel as a witness of salvation, and they were often reluctant even to do that, as the story of Jonah shows. The story of the saving of the entire Nineveh is the biggest revival story in human history! Yet Jonah would not go to the city even under orders from God, so little regard for the souls in Nineveh he had! Even after he was swallowed by the great fish and spat out he despised the Ninevites and apparently he walked into the city, gave a short prophecy of their overthrow if they did not repent. Then he walked out. When they repented Jonah went further. He was thunderstruck and did not like that he had been used by God to help bring about a revival, and sat and sulked under a plant. God then killed the plant that shaded Jonah, and Jonah was more sorry for the plant than he was about the fate of the people in the city, or as God with subtilty points out in the Book of Jonah, even the animals! So we see the Jews were chosen as a witness to the nations! God even used unsaved Nebuchadnezzar to send a letter of Evangelism to honour the God of Daniel. He even used the hard heart of Pharaoh to display his power with the 10 Plagues of Egypt, thus few seem to recall many Gentiles left with Moses to go through the Red Sea, not just the people of Israel. This kind of self sanctified racism plagued the Jews throughout their history. If you read the Jewish Talmud for instance it said in their law if you tie up a Gentile and he dies of thirst you never killed him, because he was "just a Goy". Some say this is why the Pharisees plotted to kill Jesus via betrayal to the Romans, as it was not lawful for them to kill anyone on the sabbath (the sabbath began on Friday and ended Saturday morning). Thus racist self exaltation and pride was behind the fall of the Jews. They thought as they had the Old Testament scriptures written in their language they were somehow a superior form of human life to "the Goyim". Tragic logic. The fact is they were chosen to witness to the Gentiles not chosen for salvation.
Alas alas the same racism happened to the Greeks and this is way too easy to prove! The fact that racism entered into the hearts of the Greeks, in the same proud and exalted way as it entered into the hearts of the Jews, can be shown in the following list of facts:
1) REJECTING HEBREW In choosing their manuscripts to translate the bible from, the Greeks made the totally absurd and racist decision to translate the Old Testament from the Septuagint Greek! And they trashed the Hebrew as their source of translation! Only written a few hundred years before the incarnation of Jesus. This means in every Greek bible the old testament is a translation of a translation (do not forget ancient Greek must be translated somewhat into modern Greek as it is not identical.
2) CORRUPTING THE CANON The decision to choose the Septuagint (version of the 70) instead of the original Hebrew Text used in the Authorized Bible (or King James bible) led to the inclusion of clearly apocryphal works like Bel and the Dragon. This book was never included by the Jews in the canon of scripture, and the text is absurd. This is what racism does. It led the Greeks astray.
3) ETHNOPHYLETISM: Even to this day racism is rampant in Greek Orthodoxy. As one essay about Ethnophyletism states, quote: "Today’s Gospel speaks about a very interesting topic that affects us, especially us as Greeks, because we are part of a culture that’s very, very proud. We are very proud of our history, we are very proud of our accomplishments as a people, we are very proud of our church, we are very proud of our local church here." Yes...... pride is the problem.
a quote from Orthodox Christianity.net:
quote: "Ever since Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI convened a major Synod in Constantinople in 1872, phyletism refers to a theory and practice of Church administration. According to this Synod, the heresy of ethno-phyletism holds that the Church should organize/divide itself on the basis of ethnicity and race, not geography or established traditions/canons.
In the first half of the 20th century, most of the ancient Patriarchates argued that the original Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia employed the most obvious and extreme version of ethno-phyletism. Since that time, others say it is phyletistic to claim that every nation should have its own independent Church, since this too subjects the boundaries of ecclesiastical administration to the vagaries of ethnicity and political boundaries." unquote.
4) THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN IN GREEK - leading to the same proud fall as the Hebrews.
The Empire of Alexander the Great took the Greek language across the world, as is described in their Empire, the 4 headed Leopard in Daniel 7 (it split into 4 after his death). The leopard reflects the speed and strategic brilliance of their war tactics, and in the He Goat (Alexander) smashing the ram (Darius) in Daniel 8 in the battle of Gaugamela 331 BC *.
1) The Battle of the Granicus River
2) Siege of Halicarnassus
3) Siege of Tyre
4) Battle of Issus
5) Siege of Gaza
6) Battle of Gagamela
7) Battle of the Persian Gate
8) Siege of the Sogdian Rock
I thought for a long time the battle of Isus was the battle described in Daniel 8, as I am not an expert on history, and I saw this battle in a TV Series called "The Great Commanders"**, but in fact Darius escaped and brought a bigger army than he used at Isus, and the Gaugamela victory was totally stunning by Alexander the Great as somehow he managed not to be outflanked and won against impossible odds. His first battle in Persia was at Granicus.
After this followed The Siege of Tyre*** and then "The Battle of The Persian Gate" when Alexander was ambushed by Ariobarzanes, satrap of Persis, who defeated Alexander in the first ambush attack, but after retreating from the Mountain pass Alexander feigned that he was making the same mistake of falling into ambush, and attacked Ariobarzanes army from the rear conquering them.****
The actual conquering of the Media Persian Empire was only completed when Darius was slain by one of his own commanders, Bessus, as Alexander pursued them into the Eastern part of the kingdom, and it was only conquered after Bessus himself was also betrayed and tortured slain by Alexander.***** (see the video links at bottom of this page)
Alexander was a true genius of warfare tactics, as ironically the defeat of the Greeks at the hands of the Romans in the battle of Cynoscephalae****** proved after his death "and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; " Daniel 7:7, when without the genius of Alexander the Great the Roman Empire took over the Greek Empire.
In all of this God was preparing to ditch the Jews, infected with Babylon culture, and to turn to the Gentiles to use as witnesses as well as the scattered Tribes of Israel and the Jews (Judah) and Benjamin. The PRIDE of the new testament being written in their language destroyed the Greeks just as it had the Hebrews before them. They became racist and to this day prefer to keep their own traditions not the word of God "And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." Mark 7:9, EVEN when those traditions contradict the new testament.
These victories of the Greeks (or Romans) in battle pale into insignificance when compared to King David, Jonathan, Gideon and even Samson. Why "even" Samson? Well he was far from the most spiritual of old testament saints. This should have humbled the Greeks, because their true mission from God (though almost all of present day Greece deny this) was, after the covenant was sealed by the blood of Jesus and his resurrection, now to follow the Peace and Love commandments of the "new and better promises, founded on better promises" but they instead chose to follow the example of the warlike murderer Constantine, and departed altogether from the Faith of Peace and Love, and the quote "Gospel of Peace". Galatians Chapter 4 is in fact one of the biggest pacifist scriptures in the Bible, showing true believers are now Pilgrims on a path toward New Jerusalem above, not defending the physical borders of Jerusalem etc. Greece instead plummeted into "the scarlet and purple" heresy with the Whore of Rome, melding their priestcraft (scarlet) and governmental power (purple) into what would later become the bloodbath of the 2nd Babylonian Captivity.
allow me here a slight divarication.
THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS INDEED WRITTEN IN GREEK
I wish to show a few scriptures about the fact that the new testament was indeed written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, as this is often denied, especially in the new Judaizing cults we have today.
1) "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon." Revelation 9:11. This is an affirmation scripture was written first in Hebrew, then in Greek in the New testament.
note: a small amount of the old testament was written in Aramaic, and the Gospel of Matthew and Hebrews were NOT written in Hebrew or Aramaic, BOTH were written in Greek. Changing the theology about the Greek word "porneia" in the Matthean Clause of Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 would be catastrophic, and falsely empower the new Judaizing heresy that is a resurgence of the same heresy as is refuted in the Epistle of Galatians.
2) "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Mark 15:34. If the new testament was written in Hebrew or Aramaic (which ever you say it is) it would not say "which is being interpreted" as that would be a foolish contradiction, like saying "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"
3) "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4. There are no Early Hebrew or Aramaic new testaments, and the somewhat later copies we have are very corrupt when compared to the KJV Version or even the Patriarchal Text that misses out much of Textus Receptus quotes. That would break the promise of God to preserve his word "word for word" found in the old testament prophecy quoted by Jesus (Deuteronomy 8:3).