But nothing is possible without the historical or literal level.

But here's the problem. Almost 2,000 years ago, the Holy Land was sealed off. I don't mean that a perimeter was was placed around it with a guard posted at the gate. I mean sealed with layers upon layers of stone and marble and concrete rubble. The ground was sealed never to be reclaimed by any succeeding generation. For the Roman Empire decreed that the whole lifeworld of Judea should be erased from the earth. You know that verb from the Old Testament blot out?

What we today call "Jewish Culture" arose from only one sect: Rabbinical Judaism, which arose from Pharisaic Judaism, and they represented the minority. Unfortunately, Christians over the centuries have come to equate Judaism with all things Hebrew. The word derives from an invented religion: Judah-ism ("religion of the Judeans"), which is a hybrid of the ancient Hebrew religion married to Persian cultic beliefs and practices, in particular blood sacrifice. And this reckless equation has substantially disfigured our understanding of Christianity and Christian worship.

The "peeling back" of centuries of rubble has been the painstaking work of archaeologists. Nearly 2,000 years of debris have had to be analyzed, cup by cup, for in each sample of ostensibly worthless dirt and dust could be lurking a priceless clue to the holy puzzle. The next single discovery could weigh heavily even overturning some core beliefs.

From this totality a most sobering imperative arises. If the special charism of Holy Orthodoxy is to preserve the past — the earliest, the original (if possible) — we must admit that the early and the original has yet to be revealed in its fullness. A paradoxical imperative rules all: the latest is apt to be the oldest, and the most recent might just be the original.

I need hardly mention that the most dramatic discovery of original documents ("original" meaning contemporaneous with Jesus, for the purposes of this meditation) would not be discovered until the middle of the twentieth century: the Dead Sea Scroll (1946) — 15,000 fragments tracing back to 8,000 discrete documents. Imagine this,, when the Hermitage Sisters were born, the Dead Sea Scrolls had not yet been discovered. And it would be another twenty years until they were made available in the form of books. As I say, painstaking.

As great as this discovery was, a still more far-reaching discovery, following centuries of painstaking archaeological, epigraphal, and textual work, taking into account the whole Levant and "greater Israel" (I mean the Diaspora), revealed not a Jewish lifeworld but a much larger, variegated Hebrew lifeworld, a diverse thought-world made up of many beliefs stretching out over the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and beyond — Arabia, Elephantine, Ethiopia.

The traditional Tribe of Judah (eventually the Roman province of Judea) would become cultic center of Judah-ism. And that is a tiny area. The point of a tender, female toddler entering the oppressive Zion Temple was to contrast this monstrosity of stone, in which blood sacrifice was offered, with the gentle Kingdom of God. As we know, she would become the Gate to the Kingdom of God.

This earth-shattering conclusion was reached only in recent decades, popularized by Prof. Yehezkel Kaufmann of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and refined by, among others, John J. Collins and, in particular, Yonathan Adler's book released only three years ago, The Origins of Judaism (Yale Univ. Press, 2022).

Now, I have reflected on this for the past ten years, and I will spare the Sisters a review of past reflections (I have placed hyperlinks in today's text). But the implications of this discovery are stunning. In particular, this work dislodges the wrongheaded belief that Christianity, and specifically Christian worship, arose from the Zion Temple. And to say, Christian worship arose from the synagogues, we need only review the number and diversity of beliefs represented by those many, far-flung institutions from Rome to Arabia.

Our worship is more nearly akin to the Essenes, a Hebrew group just as large as the Pharisees, who (Philo reported) went to the Temple to protest blood sacrifice offering instead their consciences to God: a broken heart and contrite spirit (Ps 50/51). Here are the roots of our religion of Theosis, what Met. Antony Khrapovitsky has called the Lord's Co-suffering love. "Take up your Cross and follow Me!" That is our religion!

I ask you to contrast the offering of a dead goat to God and the offering your conscience as a means to salvation. This was the kernel of the Good Samaritan Parable. The Levite and priest offered dead goats, but the Samaritan offered his conscience, that is, virtuous life. This is a great and central theme of the Gospels. Unaccountably, it has not been generally understood to be so.

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Today, we visit a site that has only become clear to us only in the past ten or twenty years. Excavations in the nineteenth century were believed to have uncovered the Pools of Bethesda. More recent work has located these to have been built within a Temple of the Greek god Aesclepius. So-called Aesclepions were scattered throughout the Roman Empire — in fact, more than four hundred of them. The early Church Father Justin Martyr describes the obsession:

As I say, Jerusalem society was an aggregation of many, diverse peoples and their beliefs. And like us Americans, we may be sure that the majority of them were dabblers. They had so much to choose from: magic (recall Simon in the Book of Acts), ancient Hebrew religion (the religion of Abraham, very different from the religion of Moses), pagan beliefs (they were surrounded by pagan temples), the recent Persian-hybrid religion, Judah-ism, and the assorted cults that were constantly entering through nearby seaport cities. Among the sick, and especially those who had given up on a cure — the blind, the lame, the paralytic — many came to the Aesclepion making sacrifices to the pagan god.

People who did experience healing made offerings in the form of body parts — say, an ear or leg in the form of sculpture. The leg posted with today's reflection was presented to an Aesclepion during Jesus' lifetime. The Greek inscription reads, "a thank-offering to Aesclepius and Hygeia" (Greek goddess of good health). In addition to these offerings, blood from animals was offered, similar to sacrificial rites practiced throughout the ancient world and certainly dating back to seventh century B.C. Babylon, where the Hebrew elite underwent profound transformation during a long exile.

King Nebuchadnezzar II, who had conquered Judah, makes his first appearance in the surviving historical record as a faithful prince overseeing the restoration of the Temple of Marduk (Britannica, "Nebuchadnezzar II"). Later, upon ascending the throne, Nebuchadnezzar boasted that Marduk had never eaten so well, for throughout this empire blood offerings were made to Marduk. And of course Judah was a client kingdom. The Hebrew elite spent nearly four generations there. Nearly four generations. Think of your own family. Can anyone remember a lifeworld four generations ago? I assure you 99.9% of Americans could not name their great-great-grandparents, let alone what they believed.

This is the historical backdrop as Jesus enters the scene. He sees the disturbance of waters spurring strong men to push aside the weak (for the people believed only the freshly stirred waters would heal). Among the weakest is a paralytic man who has languished on the Aesclepion's steps for thirty-eight years. We strain to find a starker example of dog-pack-think in the Gospels than this one. And we may well understand God's perspective as He takes in this frantic scene. Isn't it better to come to the succor of a paralyzed man than to enter the fracas of trampling down others, especially elderly, crippled people? And what is a "healed" man if he little more than a snarling animal — certainly, not fit company for God.

And here we must pause. Have you ever wondered about this angel who stands back and then from time to time touches the water setting of the vicious dogfight all over again? Apparently, the angels does this repeatedly ..... The verse is John 5:4, which appears not to have been written by St. John, but introduced later by a scribe. For it does not appear in the best manuscripts of St. John's Gospel. Here, again, we are faced with the challenge of discovering the original, that we may venerate, upon which we might write theology, upon which we might found our beliefs.

Jesus also sees the inevitable parallels posed by this scene: people offering up each other as a sacrifice to the pagan god Aesclepius and then later sending Aesclepius their own body parts as a thank-offering (albeit in the form of sculpture). Literally "dog-eat-dog."

Only three chapters earlier, Jesus had overturned stacks of dove cages in the Zion Temple because the holiness of the Temple had devolved into the coarse bargain of blood for salvation:

The Greek word here, by the way, is not merchandise. The phrase is house of trade: οικον εμφοριον, (oikon emphorion) — the trade of blood for salvation. It's quite a swap meet. How different really is this from the dog-eat-dog scene Jesus beholds at the Aesclepion? Ultimately, of course, the Christian will point at the Cross and say, "Him, not me." Isn't this what substitutiionary atonement is all about?

Consider the meditation on blood-sacrifice placed before us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A wounded man on the Jericho Road lies bleeding. This causes a Levite and a priest to give him a wide berth. Why? Because they fear becoming ritually unclean as they contemplate entering the Temple. This raises a basic question concerning salvation: Which one will save you? Blood-sacrifice in the Zion Temple or personal sanctity expressed in compassion? A dead goat or your conscience? After all, the occasion for the Good Samaritan parable is this question:

As our brief lesson today concludes, Jesus quotes Psalm 4 to the paralytic:

For the sacrifices acceptable to God are a clean heart and a right spirit. Sin no more: leave off worshiping Aesclepius; leave off animal sacrifice in hopes for long life.

Take heart, O Christian. For the way to Heaven is not so hard to discern. Know God. Pray to Him. Speak to Him. Above all, trust Him and follow His holy ways. And this above all: Do not neglect the Example of our Co-suffering God.

His great example enshrined on the Cross: His Co-suffering love.

Do not neglect this. The Most Holy Theotokos did not; a sword would pierce her heart (Lu 2:35). The Apostles did not; all but one would die a martyr's death. The Early Church did not; fed to lions and burned at stakes, they refused to recant their faith.

See the desperate souls all around us. These people are in the struggle of their lives. Many of them are starving and die from exposure to the cold. We must not forget them. We must sacrifice for them. This is the Co-suffering Master's teaching: "Take up your Cross and follow Me!"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.   Amen.