I have to say it loudly and clearly that everything I am today is a result of my indebtedness to Professor Rory Boid of Monash University (Melbourne). Just so people out there don't get bewildered about the 'miracle' that an idiot like me can know so much about Semitic languages without going to school. Rory Boid was my teacher. Let me say it again - I owe everything to the profound generosity of this man.
When I was living in Florida whoring it up with countless beautiful women who I happen to have met in various strip clubs in the city (Orlando is a strange place) I used to call Rory like almost every week. And back then they didn't have internet (although I have to take credit for getting him to get hooked into the internet).
Seriously, I have always though that it would make a fascinating movie (now I show how narcissistic I really am!) - producing shows in the entertainment capitals of America surrounded by the best looking women in the world and sneaking out twice even three times a week to polish up a theory that I was developing about the origins of Christianity.
But I digress ...
The one good thing about my psyche (all the faults not withstanding and unmentioned) is that I have always had a rational bent. Beneath all the irrationality there has always been an attraction to the light of reason - like a month obsessively fluttering around a street lamp in the middle of the night.
The point is that I was always entertaining. Why else would this genius waste his time answering my stupid questions? Yet beyond this there had to be something innate in my character which was willing to accept instruction.
He would just say 'this works but this doesn't' and he took the time to explain how my instincts were right but that my ignorance didn't let me answer difficulties when I tried to develop these insights beyond their applicability to a single piece of evidence.
Does that make sense?
Well even now that I am a big failed writer with my book, the Real Messiah, seemingly eternally stuck at around the 100,000 ranking on the Amazon list he sent me an email refining some ideas I have placed on this blog. I wanted to share it with you to know how it was that my 'miraculous' theory that is 'the Real Messiah' developed.
Professor Boid wrote to me this morning saying:
I don’t think you should reject the historicity of the use of this word in the plural. You are right in saying that there can only be one apostle in the sense that Moses or Muhammad were each THE Apostle. But remember there is a second meaning. The heralds sent out to announce that the Jubilee Year is on the way are correctly called שליחים or rasâ’il. These are apostoloi in a different sense. There can only be one Emissary of God announcing a new Torah, a “new dispensation” in traditional Protestant terminology. But there can be any number of heralds of the Jubilee Year. Or more exactly, there would have to be either twelve, the theoretical number of tribes, or seventy, the theoretical number of nations. (Presumably with numerous assistants). The Samaritan commentaries in Arabic call Moses the Rasûl, but this does not stop them from calling the heralds rasâ’il (plural).
I think this will make it easier to strengthen some of your arguments. You don’t have to deny the historicity of what some will say is well attested. You just have to say the usage has been misunderstood.
You see it was Boid who directed me through the maze which is Samaritan studies to figure out that 'the Gospel' is related to the Samaritan expectation of a messianic Jubilee - see this post. I can't stress how significant this discovery of his was. It changes our whole perspective on WHY THE GOSPEL WAS CALLED 'THE GOSPEL OF JESUS.'
I have read so many STUPID, STUPID books by scholars who are stuck in this European paradigm which essentially doesn't even bother to look for a cultural origin for the reason that 'the gospel' was called 'the gospel.' Mom and Dad were happy just accepting that it was called 'the gospel' I guess.
What Boid's wealth of knowledge and research has done for us is pointed in the direction of a Samaritan strata beneath the gospel and Christianity generally. Just think of it - the first evangelist was the unnamed Samaritan woman (now 'unnamed' because she was probably Agrippa's mother - Salome).
The parable of the Samaritan (the title 'good Samaritan' only comes from Christians of a later period) laying half-dead on the road was always taken by the Alexandrians (Origen) as a reference to the separation of Jesus and Christ - i.e. Jesus was the half-dead man/'Christ' was the Samaritan who rescues him.
The reference to the Son of Man coming like the holy mount Gerizim (i.e. with angels coming and going on his head) is also Samaritan. Jesus' Jewish adversaries idenify him as a Samaritan. The list goes on and on. The only reason most of us don't know about the Samaritan origins to Christianity is because our idiotic Church tradition and the scholars who help it function are only directed in one direction (the interest in Jerusalem and Jewish tradition).
It was Rory Boid who taught me that there was more to Christianity than these morons. It was he who prevented me from HATING Christianity (hating because of the idiots who misinterpret its message today and for generations). He is a truly blessed man.
