(A "Throw-Beside")
by Harvey Block
(Updated 2023/09/12)
[NOTE: I have added some notes in this document. It was originally written over 9 years ago in 2014. I have learned more since then and some of my views have changed as well.]
Our food has been changed. We do not have access to much of the rich food that our ancestors had. Much of the nutritional value is missing from our food. The seeds have been genetically modified.
The food looks nice, some of it tastes better and may be easier to eat, but we are sick and getting sicker.
Our soil has been depleted of so many of the nutrients that are needed for the nutritional value of our food.
But even if we had good soil full of all the nutrients and minerals that are needed, it would not be enough to overcome the damage that has been done by genetically modified organisms.
There is a universal law which cannot be altered or violated:
"The Law of Shadows."
What? You've never heard of it?
That's because it is such a basic law that everyone knows, so no one ever bothered to write it down as a "Law."
The law is this:
"It is impossible to move a shadow directly."
You cannot grab hold of a shadow and move it. The only way to move a shadow is to move either the object, the light or the surface the shadow is cast upon.
A "throw-beside" is what the word "parable" means literally. Jesus spoke in parables. A parable is a story about some natural things, perhaps a farmer and his field, or maybe about a fisherman catching fish, or about a soldier fighting a battle. But what Jesus was really talking about was the kingdom of the Heavens, or the message of the gospel, the good news.
The word "parable" comes from the Greek word παραβολης (parabolas), which is the combination of two Greek words παρα (para) and βαλω (balo). "Balo" is the Greek verb "to throw," from which we get the English word "ball." And "para" is the preposition "beside." For example "parallel" lines are lines that are "beside" each other. So together a "parable" is a "beside-throw" or "throw-beside." It is a story that has another meaning beside it. So if you want to communicate some idea that may be either hard to understand, or hard to believe, you throw beside it a story that is easy to understand. Then you can show that the things and events in the story run parallel to the truth that you are really trying to express.
So back to the heirloom seed. Jesus talked about the "Word of God" as the "seed" in several of His parables. He lived at a time when most of the people around were farmers, shepherds or fishermen. He told stories that were very common to their daily life. Planting seeds, catching fish with a net and herding sheep were things everyone understood very well.
Today we are being forced more and more to eat things grown from genetically modified seed. On the surface the foods may look really good. They may be sweeter than what the natural was. But there are many scientists and naturopathic doctors who are working hard to research these foods and are telling us that they do not have the nutritional value, and are actually really bad for us. But the food industry and politicians are fighting hard to hide the truth and pass laws to keep from having to pass truthful food labeling laws.
The majority of the people know that if when you saw on the grocery shelf two boxes side by side, one with a big label "GMO," and the other "Natural," most of us would choose the natural. But the food industry doesn't want that to happen. It would greatly hurt their profits, or at least so they think. So they are doing everything in their power to hide the truth and deceive the masses.
What we need is the "heirloom seed." If this trend does not turn around, life as we know it will eventually cease to exist. This problem is so serious that there are a few organizations around the world that have built and maintain "heirloom seed banks." The idea is that when the earth is on the verge of total destruction, they can bring out some uncontaminated natural heirloom seed and raise some small crops to feed the few remaining people still alive. This has been portrayed in a number of movies in recent years. It is a concern that everyone is aware of. Many of the states in the US have had initiatives to pass GMO food labeling laws, but they mostly have been defeated by huge "donations" for TV ads to misinform the masses.
Why are they so hell-bent on keeping us from what we all want, simply to know what we are eating. In many countries of the world, GMO foods are already illegal. But in the United States, it seems that no matter how hard we try, the lawmakers and the food industry won't budge one millimeter.
The reason is because of that most basic universal law—"You can't move a shadow."
So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
(Colossians 2:16-17)
Our natural food, and seed is only a shadow of the real food, the Word of God.
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God."
(Matthew 4:4)
“Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.
(Matthew 13:18-19)
So what does heirloom seed banks have to do with it?
Well, if you go into any "Bible Book Store," if you can still find one, you will find shelves full of all kinds of Bible versions. There are Bibles for women, Bibles for children, Bibles for teenagers, Study Bibles, Bibles for easy reading, and the list goes on.
They all look so nice with their "Genuine Leather" covers, or their flashy colored covers, and their pretty pictures. And they are easy to read, no hard to understand words, no difficult sayings. They have been "hybridized" for every kind of taste. The majority of the hard to digest nutrients have been removed.
There are some groups of Christians around that only use the "King James Version" of the Bible. They know that most of the rest of the Bibles have been contaminated with artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
The artificial fertilizers yield bigger crops, the churches grow large if the food tastes sweet. But they become obese and sick. And they die from diseases of the heart— "They have left their first love."—Christ.
Even the "milk of the Word" comes from GMO cows—"Sacred cows" of church doctrine like the "Trinity."
But what about the King James Version?
Well, it is certainly better than some versions out there, but it is after all still a translation. It is not the original heirloom seed. Of course everyone who knows just a little history knows that.
Well what do you expect?
Is everyone supposed to learn Hebrew and Greek, the "original" languages of the Bible?
Come on!
That ain't gonna happen!
Quite true.
But is that really the heirloom seed anyway?
I grew up in a Christian home and a Bible believing, Bible teaching church. It is a heritage I greatly appreciate and am very thankful for. But we had our "church doctrines." One was, that the "Word of God" (the "Bible") was perfect and without error. I don't remember ever hearing much about "the original" Greek, if anything at all. We all used the King James Version when I was young. I lived in a little "cow town."
After college and after getting my first engineering job, I became involved in a different church in "the big city," and soon after moved close to that church. It was amazing. It was glorious (at first). I learned so many new and wonderful things. What I learned there is still a treasure in my heart today.
They referred to the "original Greek" all the time. We still, at first used only the King James Version, and it was normal for us, at the beginning of a meeting to read all the Bible passages together, out loud, in unison. But often before we would read, the elder who was to give the message, would make corrections to the King James translation from the Greek. We would write the corrections in the margin of our Bibles and then read it together, with the corrections.
So one of my "sacred cow" doctrines was looking a bit unstable...
You know... "cow tipping."
So I started checking out the "book room" in the church meeting hall, and bought my first "Greek-English Interlinear." This is a Bible, actually only a New Testament, where the Greek and English are written, alternating on every other line, a Greek line with the English underneath. The words are lined up with each other so you can read the English translation of every Greek word right under it. So I started learning a bit of Greek. I had a bit of a head start because in engineering school, I learn many of the Greek letters used in math and engineering. Remember learning "pi 'r' squared" is the formula for the area of a circle? Well, "pi" is the Greek letter "p".
But my Interlinear book also had an "apparatus." "Apparatus" is a technical term for a special kind of notes at the bottom of the page. These apparatus notes showed the variations among the various Greek manuscripts.
So now I knew that, not only was the King James Version of the Bible not perfect, even the Greek "original" was not perfect.
Oh No! Is cow tipping really possible?
The sacred cow was really tipping now.
We were assured that the "Original Greek" writings of the apostles, the first followers of Jesus, were perfect and without error, but they had been copied, by hand, over and over for the next 1500 years. So of course it was only natural that human mistakes, copying errors got in. And we were also assured that these errors were minor, and did not effect any "major," or important doctrine.
But then I found that in the apparatus there was a rather big difference in 1 John 5:7-8. And this one had to do with the "most important" doctrine of the faith, the "Trinity." Now things were really getting interesting!
Have you ever tried milking a cow when it is laying on its side, tipped over? You can't get the milk pail under it to catch the milk.
In fact this big variation about the Trinity was not that a few manuscripts accidentally left it out by a copying mistake. It was the exact opposite! The clearest statement of the "Trinity" doctrine had been inserted there over a thousand years after the apostles wrote the original!
Now the cow was completely upside down, and dead!
Some years passed and I found myself in a home meeting "church" environment with a teacher who knew Greek. He also taught a Greek class on the side, and I learned quite a bit more of the grammatical structure of the Greek language, and even learned to "read" Greek (very very slowly.)
He did not believe in the "Trinity doctrine" and taught a different "truth" (in quotes). I listened and studied, and researched on my own. I considered what he taught and eventually concluded that it also was not correct.
He would sometimes get interesting books about the Bible or things related, and give them away to people in the home meeting. He gave me at least two. One proved to be most interesting and informative. That means "very dry and boring" to most people.
It talked about the four "text types" of the existing Greek manuscripts. That means that if you take all the existing Greek manuscripts, and study their differences, they can be grouped under these four classes or types. But then many of them have variations that don't fit well within their respective type.
[Note added 2023/08/10: I read this book back at the time and found it to be rather odd but quite interesting. I wondered how in the world the manuscripts got that way. Some years later I read the book again and had a 'revelation'. It all fell into place and gave me a whole new understanding of why the Greek manuscripts are as they are, and how they got that way. I hope to write another article about that and link it here in the future.]
This seemed to indicate that whatever the original may have been, we were really a long way from it.
The cow was starting to bloat and stink.
By this time I was really wondering about God and truth. And one day realized that I had become an "agnostic." I was not an "atheist," one who does not believe in God at all, I was an agnostic, one who does not know if there is a God.
But I over the years had heard too many things about answers to prayer and miracles, and I was absolutely sure that there was a "supernatural" realm. I became angry at God, if there was one. I wanted to know the truth and prayed much for years to know, but I felt like I knew less than ever.
Over the next several years, I slowly came back to believing that God was real, and loving, and wise, and ..... not in a hurry.
I had stopped "going to church," even home meetings. Just stayed at home most of the time.
But along the way, I had opportunity to learn a little Hebrew and Aramaic too, the original languages of the Old Testament. And I started trying to translate the first book of the Bible, Genesis.
I really was amazed at some of what I found in the Hebrew, mostly in double meanings of the Hebrew words, and so much more in the details of their ancient pictographic characters of their original alphabet.
But one lingering question haunted me. There were some variations among the manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament, but not nearly as many as among the New Testament Greek manuscripts. How could this be? It was much older and had been copied many more times. While I knew, that it had been preserved by the scribes very carefully and was regarded with very high esteem, that, to me was not enough to account for the far fewer variations as compared to the New Testament Greek. The early Christians were no doubt very careful too.
But more than that, didn't God care to help preserve His New Covenant Writings which had replaced the Old Covenant? It didn't seem reasonable. There are variations on every single page of the New Testament! Every page! But for the Old Testament Hebrew, they are somewhat few and far between by comparison.
Then I learned of a book called "Hebrew Matthew" by George Howard, and got a copy. It said that this was probably a translation of the Greek gospel according to Matthew into the Hebrew language, but that, on the other hand, the original gospel of Matthew might actually have been written in Hebrew, and the Greek was either a translation of the Hebrew, or perhaps Matthew was bilingual and wrote them both, or something like that. But it said that most scholars do not believe we have any copies of the "original" Hebrew Matthew, if there ever was one, and that this Hebrew manuscript was a much later translation. I wasn't too convinced either way. And I wasn't very impressed with the Hebrew text or the translation either. (Not that I am any kind of an expert in any of this.) It just didn't seem right to me. I even got a couple of other versions of the Hebrew Matthew from the Internet, and didn't see anything much better.
[Note added 2023/08/10: Here again, I have learned more about this and the work of Nehemia Gordon who has discovered several more Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew. While these, now 26, Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew, are at best copies of copies ... of copies. They seem possibly to indicate being from an original Hebrew autograph written by Matthew. Hopefully more about this also in the future.]
If the Greek was a translation of the lost Hebrew original, then the heirloom seed must be lost forever.
[Added 2023/08/10: But now there is more hope. More being discovered each year.]
But with the ever increasing amount of information available on the Internet, I was able to see and download a copy of the "Aramaic Gospels." And I read some writings by Paul Younan and Glenn David Bauscher. They both have made interlinear translations of the Aramaic text of the New Testament. And in reading some of their notes, I found a very profound solution to a well known "contradiction" in the Bible. It has to do with the problems with reconciling the two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. In all the Greek manuscripts and English Bibles Mary's husband Joseph has two completely different genealogies listed. And as a result, there are several other related problems. But in the Aramaic text, it does not say that the Joseph of Matthew was Mary's husband. The word there could mean husband, but it could as easily mean father or male guardian. So if we understand the Joseph in Matthew to be Mary's father, then everything falls into place. The related contradictions and problems all go away.
[Note added 2023/08/10: Years after learning about this word in the Aramaic meaning a male guardian or father, I came across a four part video series by Nehemia Gordon about another subject entirely, but he mentioned as an example, two recently discovered Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew where the Hebrew word is father. This was a major confirmation for me. Before I saw this video series I had already written my article about this. (See link at the end.)]
I only know a trace amount of Aramaic and it's the whole New Testament to read and study, so it is premature for me to say that the Aramaic is really original, but both Younan and Bauscher believe it is and have a significant amount of evidence to support their position.
I, at this point, do believe that they are correct. And if this is correct, then this is the heirloom seed.
[Note added 2023/08/10: Here also my understanding has shifted away from the Aramaic being the original. The evidence for me has been shifting more towards the Hebrew. I suspect that more of the New Testament books may have originally been written in Hebrew and then soon translated into Greek for the rest of the world. The Hebrew fell out of use and the earliest manuscripts were all destroyed as the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and also many of the Judean Christians were killed or scatteres among the nations, and their books were destroyed.]
(To read about Jesus Genealogy click here. You may search online for Aramaic and Paul Younan or David Bauscher.)