BibleProject - The Anointed Question and Response

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

When Jesus tells Nicodemus people must be born again of water and Spirit, is that connected to the anointing theme? Is Jesus’ anointing in the Jordan supposed to remind us of the flood story? Does an antichrist have to first be a christ (anointed one)? In this episode, Tim and Jon explore your questions about the theme of the anointed. Thanks to our audience for your incredible questions!View more resources on our website →Timestamps Is Jesus’ Teaching on Water and Spirit Part of the Anointed Theme? (01:25)Is Jesus’ Anointing in the Jordan Connected to the Flood Story? (09:10)What’s the Connection Between Oil and Blood in the Bible? (20:14)Does an Antichrist Have to First Be a Christ? (29:21)Why Was Jesus Anointed With Perfume Before His Death? (44:53)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Dan, we rolling. Alright. Hey Tim. Hey John. Hey. Hello. We're doing a question and response episode on the Anointed John. Hey. Hello. We're doing a question response episode. Yes. On the annoyance series. Yes. As always, I am very liberal in handing out gold stars.

Yes. Which is the teacher's form of saying awesome work. We learned from the last question and response that we did on what was it first born? That you have very fond memory of getting a gold star as a child. That's right, in class, because I got them so rarely. And so you like to hand out gold stars. I do. And so you think there's a lot of gold star- Gold star questions. Candidates here?

Yes. So many questions that came in about the anointed podcast conversations, great questions, as always try to select like the top most repeated ones. And there were some runaway winners on that front. And but also sprinkled in our lots of great observations that you all are making as we're learning to read the Bible together and see design patterns and hyperlinks. And so there's a lot of that. Good stuff.

In fact, let's just start with a great observation. And a question that comes from John in Arkansas about anointing in Genesis chapter two. Hey, this is John from North Theroc, Arkansas. You'll talk about how in Genesis two, the two elements required to create humanity was water and spirit. That reminded me of when Jesus told Nick and me, Demise, that you must be born again of

the water and the spirit in John 3. Is there any connection between these? Thanks for all y'all do. Yeah, great question. Excellent. And he's referring to the classic passage in John 3, where we get the classic Bible verse that football players put on their face sometimes.

Oh wow. Yeah, you know like, well, yeah, I know John 3.16. The 3.16, it becomes a thing, like three colon 16, people like paint it on things. It's like, it's the verse. It's a great line.

From a conversation that Jesus had with a Bible nerd, ancient Jewish Bible nerd, name, Nicodemos, or Nicodemus, or Nicodemus, as we say in the US. So just real quick, so this guy comes to Jesus at night. This is in the Gospel of John chapter 3 and acknowledges that like he's kind of down to Jesus. He says like, you know, I We I really think you've come from God and you're teaching the good stuff

and Jesus goes instantly into like a riddle mode and It's perfect. And what he says is, truly I say to you, Nicodemus, unless someone is born, I'm trying to remember the Greek. Ah, yeah. Onnothin. Onnothin.

Onnothin. Onnothin. Above or again. Yeah, a second time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Unless someone is born onnothin, which could mean again or from above, he cannot experience or see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus takes him to mean born again, and then Jesus quickly makes clear that's not what he meant. Oh, interesting. Which is funny because that's the translation that gets rendered in most of our English translations, is Nicodemus' misunderstanding. Jesus said to say, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, but there's ambiguity with that word.

The word has very clearly two distinct possible meanings. Born from above, born a second time, Nicodemus says, look, there's no way to be born a second time. That's physically impossible. I'm not going to be able to climb into my mother's womb again. That's right. And Jesus says, okay, let's start this over again.

Unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Nicky, you should know, you know, whatever is born from a flashy human, it's a flashy human. But man, I'm telling you, what's born of the spirit of God? Oh, that's just more spirit. You know, you shouldn't be amazed, Nicodemus, when I say to you, that you must be born onothen from above. And of course, the assumed is that God's heavenly presence

is up on high, and so if he sends a spirit, he sends it from above. He says, the wind blows where it wishes. You hear the sound, but man, you can't predict it. You don't know. It's mysterious how the spirit works. And Nicodemus is like, what are you talking about? How is this possible? Jesus goes on to say, listen,

if I start talking to you about earthly things, fleshy things, and you don't believe me, how will you believe me if I start talking to you about things from above, heavenly things? And then he starts talking about how he's from above coming down to bring God's truth and eternal life and God's will of the world that he sent his son from above. So this whole conversation is about how God provides his heavenly life and spirit

to rebirth humanity from above. The son comes down from above, the spirit comes from above, and when the spirit is sent from above, that is linked with his first little line of to be born of water and spirit. Yeah, because as he goes on, he just focuses on spirit. Yes. But as he sets it up, he says, born of water and spirit. Water and spirit. Yeah, exactly. So what Jesus is doing is he's drawing on a deep, deep association in Jewish tradition that comes from the Hebrew Bible, where God's heavenly spirit that is poured out onto

the land to bring about life is a core motif that begins, that we studied in the Garden of Eden story, where God's, the role of God's spirit in the Seven Day Creation narrative, and then the role of God's spirit linked with the water in the Garden of Eden story with the birth of the human as a really key image. And what's interesting is that link between the water and the spirit that's associated there. It's implicit in Genesis 2. It starts to get drawn upon throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. So Jesus isn't just riffing off of Genesis 2.

He's also got passages like Isaiah 44-3 on the brain. When God promises to the exiles and Babylon, these are going to restore them. And that restoration is described in this way. I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. And you're like, oh, yeah, like you did just plant the garden of Eden. Parallel lines, I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your seed or your descendants. So the pouring out of water is parallel to the pouring out of the Spirit to bring new seed, new descendants to new birth.

Cool. So John, Gold Star, man. Yeah. Gold Star, yeah. So what's cool there is Gold Star, man. Yeah. Gold Star, yeah. So what's cool there is, and this happens a lot in the teachings of Jesus and in the Apostles is, though it's often have a whole network of hyperlinked texts from the Hebrew Bible pulled together in a tradition and they've become one thing, one collection and one idea in the minds of Jesus and the Apostles.

And so sometimes they'll only quote from one link in the chain, or sometimes they'll blend wording from two links in the chain together, but actually there's like seven links. And by links, you mean passages? Different passages in the Hebrew Bible that are themselves intentionally hyperlinked. Yeah. So this is a good example of Isaiah drawing on the water spirit association from the David story and from the Genesis story and other places too. So anyway,

great job, John. John from Portland. This John from Portland, I think that's wonderful. I think the meta thought is it's true that there's lots of cryptic stuff in the Gospels and in the New Testament letters and it's easy to just take them kind of where you want to take them and how cool is it that you can use the Bible as meditation literature where it does kind of interpret itself through what you're calling hyperlinks and yeah and that it's cool that it's just we're doing it in community. Yep, here it is. Yep. So awesome.

Way to go, John. And way to go, Stephanie from Colorado, who made it just an awesome observation about the flood story in a pretty cool way. Stephanie, let's hear from you. Hi, my name is Stephanie Hunter and I'm from Denver, Colorado. I have a question about the anointed series, and the significance of olive oil as a means to mark anointed ones. In the story of Noah, when God cleansed the world through the flood,

the first new growth on the earth was an olive branch brought back to the ark by a dove. This signify that the new world was ready to be populated again under God's new covenant with Noah. The olive branch reminds me of the significance of olive oil in anointing. In the New Testament, when Jesus was baptized, the dove of the Spirit allites on him, when he comes up out of the water as well. Do you think that the significance of the Spirit appearing like a dove on Jesus was to point back to the promise given to Noah of a new earth and a new covenant

and to point God's divine anointing of his son in this moment. Thanks for everything you do. So good. Nice. So good. Wow. The olive branch in a dove in that story. Yeah.

Okay, the reason why I put John and Stephanie's questions kind of up at the front is they both are great examples of how you're reading something in the Gospels and you have that feeling like I've been here before or at the sounds familiar and oftentimes what will come up is one main passage. So Stephanie, for you, these little details of the flood story, whereas the dry land is merging out of the water, you have a dove, and why the olive branch, you know? What's that about?

So this is another example where the flood story is participating, is one of many links in a chain, where birds, waters, olives, or oil are linked together in anointing or purification stories. So I want to hi-fi Stephanie and then show how that actually, the flood story is itself riffing off of something that came before the flood and then where it goes after that. So I think you probably know the first one where I'm going to go when it comes to birds and water. The spirit of God hovering over the cosmic abysmal waters. Yeah, yeah, right there. Yeah, in Genesis 1. So it's a core image of God's invisible, energizing personal presence with that word hover,

which I suppose. Spirit of God hovering. Yeah. And in Hebrew, hovers met a chephet. It's specifically, it's only ever used to birds. What else hovers in the ancient world? They didn't have aircraft. You're totally excellent.

You're totally excellent. I remember, somehow when I was a kid, hovercraft were cool in like the early 90s. Oh yeah, hovercrafts. I just remembered whenever they, maybe they were new, were they new? Then maybe they weren't new. I don't know when they finally like got that technology

to work, but it's amazing. Have you ever seen a plane just like land with hover technology? It's incredible. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And those hovercraft boat things that can go from water on the land. Have you seen, remember those? That's what I'm talking about. Oh, that's what you're talking about. Yeah, they're like boats, but that can travel on the land. Oh, yeah. Okay. On the big inflatable thing. Or have you seen the guy with the arms that are like, the jets? Oh, yes. And they're like hovering.

Okay, then that's how we're... Okay, so the point is the English word hover has brings up a lot of things in my mental encyclopedia that are not part of what we're in the biblical authors. Yeah. The word is specifically used to birds. Got it. And so right there, the image of the spirit and the waters in a bird-like hovering is

a way of a key. And so what God does is He summons out of the waters for dry land to emerge, the Yabashah, the dry land. And what comes up out of the land is fruit, fruiting plants with seed in them. So, is it interesting that after God purifies and decreates through the flood, the moment the flood waters reach up to the mountains, God remembers His covenant with Noah and He sends out a rewach, his spirit wind over the waters. It's probably, is it rendered wind in most translations? Usually rendered wind, cause yeah, it says God sends a wind. Sends a wind.

But de-creation flips into recreation in the pivot sentence of the flood with God sending the Spirit. And then right through the paragraphs that follows with the waters receding and all of Noah sending out the devs, there's all of this vocabulary from days one through six of Genesis. Oh, and days one through seven, because he waits in different periods of seven days. And he sends out a dove and it flies over the waters

and it can't find any dry land. And then it finds a little bit and it brings the olive branch. And there's sequences of day and night. It's awesome. So it's recreation motifs that are all over and that's also connected to what you're noticing, Stephanie, is that the rebirth of creation is connected to God's spirit, hovering. But now an actual bird, hovering over the waters to get the olive branch.

And it's the olive branch that's the specifically in olive branch. Yeah, it's so cool. Here's what's fascinating is that in Leviticus, this pattern goes off the charts in purification rituals. So when everybody has a skin disease or has gotten reproductive fluids on them, male or female, or has touched a dead body, you have to go through purification rituals before you can re-enter before you re-birthed into the worshiping community. And the purification rituals...

And we have a whole series of conversations on holiness about this, right? Yes, yeah. That's right. Back in our Leviticus conversations. And we lived it. From the year of the Torah that we did. I'm remembering even back to talking about

I think the holiness conversation. Yeah, long time ago. Way back. So what's interesting about all those purification rituals, this is in Leviticus like 12 through 15, is it's people doing as individuals what Noah did at the flood. It's really fascinating. If you're impure, you wait a period of seven days. Same phrase is Noah. Then you go seven days, the same phrase is Noah. Then you go to the priest, and the priest, and specifically it's doves

that are the sacrificial offerings or purification. And then there'll often be either water mixed with blood or olive oil mixed with blood that becomes part of purifying, and then that gets sprinkled or poured over the one to be re-burced or purified, and then they're pronounced clean. In other words, the author of Leviticus

is portraying the purification of Israelites on analogy or parallel to the purification of the land after the flood. Because you've said that a number of times that the flood is a purification of the land. And I guess I've always just been like, oh yeah, but as you bring up that parallel, you're like, oh, okay, there's something there. That's right.

Just as the land was defiled by innocent blood, it should. The fire light on it. And the blood defiled, made it ritually and pure. And so the flood is viewed as a washing, and then what you should be hearing once you've read through the whole Torah, when you go back to those details in the flood narrative,

is, oh my goodness, it's a cosmic purification ritual. The dove getting the olive branch. It's all described in the language of the purification rituals you'll come across later in the Vatican. Okay, so when Jesus Baptism now we have a frame of a cosmic purification ritual happening as well. Yes, well, I guess the point is by the time you get to, well, by the time you get to Jesus,

it's now fully loaded with all kinds of other layers in the from the prophets. Okay. Especially Ezekiel. Ezekiel was the one who talked about how God would renew his spirit by pouring out water. This is also connected to John 3 earlier, to renew his people and plant a new garden of Eden in the land where people would obey the laws of the covenant. That's key also in this. So when Jesus gets baptized, it's activating new creation, recreation, but also the reason they're getting baptized is because Israel now needs to turn away from all of the ways that it's been unfaithful to the covenant and has brought impurity or sin and ruin into the land.

So John's baptism is a purification for the forgiveness of sins, is what he called it. That's a new addition to this anointed theme that we didn't talk about, a purification aspect. And how does it fit? Because, and the anointed themes all about selecting a human, first it was the human race, but then tracing a line of the human who will crush the snake and using this anointing ritual with all of these symbols. So if it seems like it's about election and selection, not about purification. Yeah, anointing with oil.

That's right. Yeah. Yep. And then the immersion in waters, the purification through waters, that's a wind and spirit, is about purification and recreation. And I think maybe this is just a part of the challenge of the fact that the biblical authors primarily communicate through poetic and narrative symbolism, that the symbols can come to have different shades of nuance

depending on the context. So for anointing for the kings, it's the liquid of heaven, life, and the spirit poured out to select an anoint God's partner. But also when God's partner has blown it. Yeah, they need a purification. They need a purification that's not anointing with oil. It's like a mini flood. Oh, well.

To wash away and to repureify and to rebirth. And that's, I think, what Jesus, like John chapter three, and what the, and the baptism of Jesus brings, like, them all together. Yeah. Yeah. The rich, multi-layered meaning of anointing, which is why it's such a dense, dense little scene.

Cool. There's such a dense, dense little scene. Cool. There's probably more there, but the flood story is actually really key. In a way that we hadn't ever talked about, and so I wanted to make sure we talked about. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah. Great. Let's actually, we're going to continue in this line with an observation and a question

from Lizzie in Texas. Hello, Tim and John. This is Lizzie Keesley from Central Texas. I love how you emphasize that oil is the liquid life of the fruit or seed, such as with olive oil. Do you think we are supposed to draw a connection between the liquid life of the fruit and the life in the blood that's mentioned in Leviticus. Both oil and blood are used to anoint people or objects, such as the altar, the tabernacle, and the priest. Thank you so much for your awesome podcast. Thank you for an awesome question. Yeah. Yeah, or observation.

Yes, yeah, and observation. Yeah. Yeah, or observation. Yes, yeah, and observation. We've talked around this. Maybe we didn't talk about it in this series. We've talked a lot about the life and the blood. It leaves a lot of questions for me. You said one day we should do a blood-beam study. I think we...

Yeah, I've been accumulating interesting observations about blood throughout the biblical story for years. Yeah. And it's kinda. I had a forehead slapping. I was actually a church that I was standing gathering. Yeah. And we were singing a song. About the blood?

Yeah. I was just reflecting, like, thinking about anybody who brought a friend that day. Yeah, right. Or maybe it doesn't follow Jesus. And like, I'm walking into a building of fellow Portlanders. Yeah, singing about blood. about blood singing about this ancient Jewish man's blood that cleans me. What a strange set of symbols. But you know, maybe that person would reflect these

people really are finding meaning in the symbol. What's the story underneath it? And then it struck me that the blood of Abel, page four, yeah, crying out. And then the blood of the lamb, revelation, and you're like covered, cover, man. Oh, you got a theme video. And you got a theme video. So anyway, we'll leave it.

Yeah, and we talked, you know, ages ago during that holiness conversations, or notice maybe sacrifice and tommas conversations about how strange it is for a modern thinker to purify something with blood. Like if you splatter blood somewhere, that's unsanitary. I cleaned that up. That's not purifying it. That's making a mess. But in this ancient mindset, taking blood and sprinkling it on an object is setting it apart and purifying it.

And so there's something there in the ancient psyche that I don't fully appreciate. Yeah. In a way, it's kind of like Nicodemus saying, how can these things be? And Jesus is like, what? You don't get the symbol? And remember symbol in the Bible doesn't just mean it's just a symbol. Symbols are physical, visual events or objects that are themselves a little, a taste of incarnation and our embodiment of something much more cosmic and real.

Yeah. Um, so in Leviticus 17, there's a little summary of an idea that's been at work since the Cain Enable Narrative that the blood is the life. Blood is life. And by life, you mean? The blood is the life. Leviticus 17-11. Yeah, but what is life?

Oh, the life is the animated life essence of a creature who's being in existence as a gift of and sustained by God. The blood is the life. It's the life. It's the liquid essence of the living energy of the creature. Because when you said the way you just defined life as a definition of ruach. Oh, well, okay. So yeah, exactly. So the spirit is the invisible animating energy. Okay.

That, you know, we inhale the moment we come out of the womb and that we exhale. Yeah But they're still blood in the body When the spirit goes but that blood belongs in the body. Yeah, so when you have a living creature and it gives its blood the blood is the life Yeah, but they. But blood and spirit closely connected. So the idea that the blood is the life of a human and the oil is the life liquid of a plant. There's a deep connection there between the plants and the humans. And I guess I wanted to highlight Lizzy that it's just something

I've been thinking about too. And I need to meditate a lot more on these texts. But what's interesting is that oil, remember in the Genesis narrative, the water is provided by God, and then that's what plants, the gardens, and the garden plants, which are up on a high heaven on earth mountain. And so oil comes to represent the liquid life of heaven poured out from above that births gardens, brings gardens about. Whereas blood symbolizes the life of an earthly creature, and then blood is not meant to go into the ground, like what happens when they're born out.

It's not meant to be poured out on the ground, because that represents the loss of life of a creature. What it is actually meant to happen is that blood, if it's truly going to represent another life, needs to go up to heaven. Like what the priests do when they take the blood that is the life, and then they go past the first curtain into the holy place, and they pass the cherubium, and they go back into Eden, and then they pass the second set of cherubium, and they take it into the holy where it's meant to be. They're taking the blood up to heaven, or into heaven. Yeah. And so it's sort of like the oil represents this life essence from God that comes from heaven to earth.

Okay. But then the blood to represent before God needs to go up to heaven. And there's a big theme of this in Hebrews, especially about Jesus presenting his blood in the heavenly temple. The ascension of the blood up to heaven. So that's one connection. There's some relationship between blood and oil that I think is really rich. There's like an inversion relationship. They're similar. On that front, yes. Yeah. But where oil is the life of the garden, Yes, yeah, but where oil is the life of the garden,

that we can celebrate and pour out on each other. In a way that's actually beautiful. It comes from Eden, spread, comes down from heaven on the land. It comes down from heaven and from Eden out to spread, you know, spread garden life to the nations. And then there's the blood of a creature which is not supposed to be poured out. And when it is, that's violence.

And that actually is a porno and makes things richly impure. But you're saying that you can take that blood and bring it back up into heaven and say, this is where it belongs. It belongs. Life belongs where heaven and earth are united. So I'm going to take the life that was spilled and bring it to where it belongs. And that's a ritual, a sacrament that is speaking to some cosmic, beautiful, like reunion of life in heaven and earth. Yeah. And specifically the life of a blameless substitute that can cover for an appeal to God's mercy on behalf of the life of the one standing outside the tent. So the blood is a life that returns to heaven to appeal to those outside or down below, whereas the oil is heavenly life from above

that brings God's life to those who are below. One goes up, one goes down, one goes out, one goes in. So that's where your observation sent me, Lizzy, and I think there's a lot more to ponder there. It's awesome. About blood and oil. And really, and then the priestly rituals in Torah will be the place to go to meditate on those connections. So let me know how that goes.

Lizzy. Okay, moving on. Yeah. We've got a great question from Joseph. We brought up something we don't normally talk about. We're having a phrase of the anti-Christ, the anti-annoyed. And this came up in regards to Saul, because he was against David, and you and David's the anointed, which is the Christ in Greek. Yeah, and so you said hey look at Saul's the first anti-Christ

It's an explosive thing to say. Yeah. Yeah, so Joseph You've got a great question about that. Shalom Shalom brothers and sisters in Christ at the Bible project This is Joseph from comfort, Texas. My question is regarding the anti-Christ This is a term with which I am familiar due to my Christian upbringing. However, your anointed series has caused me to ponder it anew. Since Christ means anointed, Antichrist means against anointed or even unannointed.

So my question is, does the or an Antichrist have to first be a Christ, one of the ones whom God anointed? For example, Saul. Thank you for your consideration and response. God bless your work 100fold. Thanks Joseph. Yeah. I'll receive that blessing. Really? Yeah. Careful. A true time. It's a lot of times. I'll receive that. Okay. Yeah. So maybe just a name, I don't remember the moment the phrase entered my mind, but a

while ago it did occur to me that Saul really is this kind of first portrait of an anointed one who then becomes this anti-annointed because he becomes the mirror opposite and opposes God's true anointed one, which is David. But that word also, that phrase has a particular history. Antichrist. Yeah, in popular forms of, well, in a form of American Protestantism that was really prominent in the 20th century. And still it's today. Specifically around the end time stuff.

End time stuff. that's right. And it's related to the way that phrase gets used in the book of Revelation and the apocalypse. Okay. And so I'm trying to back up and say, where did such an ID even come from? If it appears in the Revelation, the whole point is, has a long prehistory

in the biblical story, and we're getting to the roots of it here. So the phrase anti-annoyed, anti-christos, is a Greek compound phrase. It's actually the compound of a preposition in Greek anti, which we get anti, which means the opposite in something in the place of or against, like over against. And it kind of, it kind of means Saul is all of those. So anointed, our core image in the video is anointing, to be anointed is to be a heavenly person who's marked out as a bridge between heaven and earth because God's heavenly life has been poured out on you through the Spirit and that symbolized by the unknowing of it. So the core idea is of a heaven on earth spot or place or

person. So Saul, in the case of Saul, he is given opportunity to be an anointed and he had functions as he noided the first part of his story. But then once he goes through his failure at the tree of decision, yes, a few of them, then his life begins to fall apart, and God raises up another anointed in his place. And the twist of the Saul story is the rest of his life gets spent thinking that he's still the anointed one opposing and threatening and trying to kill the actual anointed one. You get two anointed ones and you get one who's real and the other one who's anti.

So your question, Joseph, is does somebody need to be an anointed? To become an anti-annointed. To become an anti-annointed. And it seems like that's kind of the logic of the story. In other words, the anti-annointed is a term to describe somebody who looks like, sounds like, thinks they are an anointed, or part of the anointed, but in fact, they are and anointed, were part of the anointed, but in fact, they are working in opposition

to the real purposes of God. And what's interesting is that is, is how the term is used again in the New Testament, but outside the revelation. Okay. This phrase appears in the letter of first John in a really interesting way. So the setting of first John is of a network of house churches that John the elder oversaw or helped plant, we don't know.

Maybe around the region of Ephesus, people debate these things. But you know, the letter says that there's a group of followers of Jesus who split the church and left, because they don't acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, Son of God, become human, come in the flesh, is what he says. And so a group broke off, and now there's hostility between the two groups. And he describes that group. Well, he says in chapter two, he says, he says, chapter two verse 18, he says, children, it is the last hour, just as you have heard the anti-messiah is coming, even

now many anti-messiahs have already appeared. And by this we know it's the final hour because they went out from us, but they were not really from us. For if they had been from us, they would have remained with us. But the fact that they went out was to show us that they are not from us. So in this case, it's clearly a, we thought they were of the Messiah, but in reality, they don't confess Jesus as a Son of God, become human. So they are actually... Christ.

...until you're not dead. Okay. But then there's this category of...so you know that there's been those people. There's the, like, pinnacle one coming. It seems like what is being said here. What's that category? The Antichrist is coming. Oh, got it.

Yeah, well, so it's a way of referring to the two roads for humanity outside the garden. Because humanity is collectively the anointed one, so to speak. Yeah. Coming out of the garden, exiled, the former anointed, and so God's going to raise up a seed from the woman who's going to crush the snake and be the true human that Adam and Eve and humanity's failed to be. So you have these kind of alternate portraits of the humanity anointed from the beginning, but then the real anointed

the God will raise up to crush the snake. And so there's just this inversion or mirror opposites of the true versus the anti-anointed. And so in a way that's kind of what can enable represent or what Joseph and his brothers represent or what Moses and his brother represent. Because remember Moses is the one really interceding for Israel up on the mountain, whereas his brother, the anointed one, high priest, is down making idols at the foot of the mountain,

right? And so there's this pattern of that it's difficult to tell the true Anointed one from the anti-anointed where that there's always these opposite forces and Representative humans working throughout history and so in the same way in the revelation picks up on motifs from Daniel and the prophets about human systems like the city of Cain, or the empires of Nimrod coming together in the new megabablon to oppose the purposes of God. And that's driven by the spirit of the anti-enoid. But in reality, there's the real anointed,

who are the people of the Lamb, who are willing to exercise their power like David as the anointing ones by suffering and surrendering their lives so that the kingdom of God can be built through suffering love. And that's how you know the difference between that anointed and the anti-anointed. And then different Christian traditions try to nail down, well, maybe this will be focused on a particular person and a time and predict the dates and what government they'll come from. And that's the popular American form.

Well, because, yeah, because you said, when I think of the anti-crisis coming, I'm thinking of a person. And so then you start to think of a ruler, some sort of empire or something. Yep. Yep. But then you also just said, well, if the original anointed are all humanity, then the ultimate anti-anointed is humanity that is against the anointed. That's right.

Humanity. Yeah. Against the annoyance of humanity. Yeah. And, or against this idea of humanity being called into the heaven on earth, place new life, new spirit. And then it's more of a collective than a person. Yeah. And you also just used the phrase the spirit of the Antichrist. Well, that's John, is that John's phrase?

No, he just says the Antichrist. And, that's a good point. So it just makes the whole idea a lot more ambiguous. And maybe that's on purpose because it is kind of an ambiguous idea. But I think in that tradition of the Protestant, you know, and times, let's figure it out, tradition. It's a person. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So what's great about what John says here is he thinks of it both as an embodied form

of something that's coming, and even now many anti-Christ have appeared. And what he's describing is people that were used to be a part of their church. Yeah, yeah. So it's not either one future end times ruler or just a collective symbol. It's both for the one and the many. And it forces that work in history from the moment we all left the Garden of Eden. And I guess that's the, I think, within the Bible, the Garden of Eden and I Guess that's the I think in within the Bible the image of the anti Messiah

Doesn't just play one role and yeah some groups and and time scenarios But they had heard You have heard the anti Christ is coming. Yeah, what did they hear? What was that conversation about? So it seems like this is what Paul is appealing to Where he would teach churches about the man of lawlessness. And in their context, it was very embodied in the Roman emperors, which are very much being targeted in these figures of the Antichrist or the beast. these figures of the Antichrist or the beast in the revelation.

There's a lot of illusions for century Roman persecution and the role of Nero happening in the revelation. And people debate these things, but I think there's a very good case to be made there. And if it is referring to like Roman Emperor, Roman Emperor was never an anointed person or a person in the Christian club that decided I'm out. Yeah, sure, but they are a ruler who's in that place because they've been appointed in God's Providence to take up as a ruler.

That's why you pray for them, right? And you're thinking of Paul, talking about how in the Providence of God those rulers are there, to fulfill God's purpose, whether they recognize it or not, they're God's servant. Okay. As it regards, yeah, my hands... Well, because that's a question. Yeah.

Because it's easy to think of the Antichrist as like, okay, someone's going to come, I got to watch out for this person. Okay, maybe even it's just like a general type of person. But the question in particular was, does an antichrist have to once have been an anointed one? And then I guess the question behind, the next question is, what does it mean to have been an anointed one?

Yeah, sure. Is any elected official or like, or king who gets a kingdom in some way? Like you were just saying, God gave them that authority so they were yeah, I know it Yeah, so yeah, you're right. I'm maybe mudding the waters not not being clear I think I could be wrong about this But I think the way this pattern works is that in in one sense every human being isn't anointed one because we come from the earth and

our is an anointed one. Because we come from the earth and are a combination of... We're giving God's divine breath. Yeah. And God's heavenly life poured out on us that we never asked for but just received. So in one sense, and every human is called to be that image of God partner, to recognize they have some kind of agency and calling in the world. Some of those human image of God's partners find themselves for certain seasons of their lives in places of great influence.

And there is a extra responsibility there, and man for those who are really in tune with the generous love of the God who may image. And this really cool stuff from happened. Like life of heaven can get poured out on earth, but the opposite can happen. And they can become an embodiment of anti-annoyed. And I think those are images that are developed in the early Genesis stories.

They get expressed throughout the storyline. So in a way it's like a set of clothes. Or a set of rolls that all of us are playing out in our own lives. And they're also played out in the drama of human history in the ab and the rise and fall of institutions and governments and cities and empires and that anti-Christ and Christ categories can be fruitful ways like I said a glasses to put on to think about all of those different parts of the human story. Okay and actually our video on Daniel our overview video the way this works out in Daniel and the view of the beast, and what is the beast, and that horn that grows out of the beast.

And a lot of it is about, is it referred to as one person in one event in the future? Or is it part of a pattern that plays itself out over and over again in human history? Or maybe it's both of those, and that video talks about that a little bit more. Great. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thank you, Joseph. This next question is the runaway winner, like the most repeated question that points out a story in the gospels that we didn't talk about.

And you know, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, oh man, that was a genuine oversight. On my part, like we didn't talk about it. We totally should have talked about this story. Because we talked about Jesus' baptism as an annoying thing. But there is actually a story where Jesus gets oil poured on his head. And we should have talked about it, and so we'll talk about it now. So we've got two questions of two people asked something about that story, but many, many, many people have.

Actually, I had some friends reach out to me too. What's the deal to him? So we'll listen to questions from Dometrick in Maryland and Joshua in Nebraska. They have a great way of kind of getting some good ankles on it. Hello, my name is Dmitryk. I'm currently in Hanover, Maryland. This question is for the anointed Bible podcast series. Can you speak about the anointing of Jesus?

The gospel tells us that Mary anointed Jesus before his death with some type of perfume or perfume oil. What is the significance of Jesus being anointed at that time, and was it just his feet or his head and his feet? Would any of it matter since it seems to be a departure from the Old Testament's anointing? to be a departure from the Old Testament's anointing. Hey Tim John and Bible Project Team, Joshua here in Omaha, Nebraska. My question is about the story where Jesus is anointed at Bethany with the expensive perfume

and not the Eden Juice recipe we get in the Torah. Jesus mentions that this anointing was for his burial preparation and not priesthood or kingship like you've explored before. I was wondering if this adds a new category, a new depth or insight to the theme or if it's just running along the same tracks you've been talking about. I'd love to hear your reflections on what point the gospel authors may be making with this story. Thanks. Appreciate you all. The Eden juice recipe.

I love that. It's a great phrase. Yep. Yeah, when we go to market with our anointing oil, that'll be in the running. Eden juice. Eden juice. Yes. Okay. So there are this is the fascinating little rabbit hole. We don't have time to go down all the rabbit holes associated. There's a story of Jesus getting anointed with some kind of perfumey or expensive oil

by a woman in each of the four gospels. However, there's split into two categories. In the gospel of Luke chapter 7 and in the gospel of John chapter 12, what we hear of is the Jesus' feet being anointed. In Luke, it's a woman who's just called a sinful woman, and she wipes Jesus' feet with her hair, and then in John 12, it's Mary in Bethany, but it's his feet. Then you get two stories, one in Mark chapter 14, and one in Matthew chapter 26, and it's Jesus's head being anointed by someone called Mary at Bethany, and Jesus connects us to his coming burial. So there's four stories, two about feet anointing, coming burial. So there's four stories, two about feet anointing, two about head anointing, and different details from the stories. It's kind of swap between the two. That's a whole

rabbit hole. It all happens in Bethany, all the stories? No. Oh, okay. No. Just some of them do. Okay. And so there's a whole history of discussion about did Jesus get oil put on him two times? Or did it just happen one time? And the memory is reflected in different ways. Details are told in different ways. Details slide between the stories in a way that there's something core that happened, but it's kind of refracted through four prisms.

That's the whole thing we don't have time to go down. But what I wanna focus on is the Mark 14 and the Matthew 26 version, because in those versions, Jesus is anointed on his head. Okay. Which is how you anoints a king or... Exactly, exactly. On the head. That's right.

So it's Passover, it's Mark 14's version, Passover, a week of Passover in Jerusalem, final showdown. And Jesus had been, seems like going in, or staged nearby some friends house in Bethany, which is a town just east of Jerusalem. Oh, Bait Ani means house of the afflicted one or house of the Ani in poversh'd one. And in Mark's version it says it's the home of Simon the leper. Most likely referring to one of the people that Jesus healed of

skin disease. And then the guy was like Jesus. Anytime you want to come by my house, you're welcome. So he stays the same in the leper. And you know, so they're having dinner. And there's a woman that comes with a vial of costly perfume of pure nard, which is, you know, some Eastern Asian plant. But at the point, her fumes had oil base. I think they have water base.. Do we have oil base perfume? I don't know idea. I need it to why.

Anyway, she breaks it open and pours it over his head. And the disciples are really shocked because this is like some premium premium perfume a few. Yeah equivalent of you know thousand a few thousand dollars something like that. Oh really really fancy Mm-hmm and They're saying like what this could have been sold and given to the poor which is a great point. Yeah, you know But Jesus says lever alone She's done something really beautiful. Um, and then he says you will have the poor with you after this weekend.

Yeah, you can sell some stuff and yeah, you'll have a chance. You'll have your chance to serve the poor in my name. Um, but I'm here right now and something's about to go down. Uh, she has anointed my body for burial. So I say to you, wherever the good news is announced around the world, what this woman did will be spoken of in memory of her. So what's interesting is anointing corpses with oil and perfumes. You do that after you're dead, though.

Yes. Yep. So that was... Because they're going to start stinking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, the Egyptians have their own version of dealing with that, with embalming, and then doing oils and fragrances.

So there's multiple things coming together here. Because usually anointing is a sign of God's heavenly life coming on the head of an electric-chosen leader. And we know as a reader, that's already happened to Jesus, not with the symbol of the oil, but with the reality of what the symbol pointed to, which is water and spirit. So in that sense, that was Jesus' anointing. But now here we have an anointing on his head, but all of the, what you think the symbol would mean is all being inverted. And I think in very intentional ways.

That the anointing for a king is to celebrate their rule. Yeah. And so it's celebrating their life. And here, the anointing is to prepare for Jesus' death. That's right. But the gospel authors are going to make very clear, implicitly, through Jesus' crucifixion narrative, that this is how he becomes king. Through death.

Through death. He's inaugurated, you know, pilot famously says, behold the man, which is like kind of this parody of a presentation of a new ruler, you know, behold your king. Yeah. And they put the sign up. The sign up king the Jews, he gets a crown, he gets a scepter, he gets his robe. Yeah. So the gospel authors are all leading up to the fact that Jesus actually becomes the anointed king. They're mocking it, but it's actually happening. By his execution.

Yeah. So how fitting is it that he gets anointed for his death, but his death is also his collection, coronation. Yes. Yeah. Like for sure, that's part of what they're doing here. Yeah, it's cool. And so it's sort of like an inverted

anointing story, Jesus style, yeah, where his arrival into a seat of power and influence is his death anointing at the same time. I also have wondered then, because the no-ing thing for burial is connected to what you would do in a grave, that there's something about Jesus's, he's going to descend to the grave,

and so the no-ing thing for burial is like that, but that descent to the grave is inverted by his ascent into cosmic rule in his resurrection and ascension. So I think the point, maybe to answer both Dometric and Joshua's question is, this is a creative twist on the Hebrew Bible patterns of anointing, but not in a way that dismisses them. It's a creative inversion to make a powerful point that it's through Jesus' death. That he becomes king. That he becomes the king, the true anointed one, who unites heaven and earth, but by giving

his life instead of taking or seizing it through violent power. It's powerful stuff. So there you go. Now we officially talked about that story. How do you have any other thoughts or observations about that? No, it seems par for the course for the Bible to do twists and turns with the theme. And then it seems par for the course for the gospel authors to say the way that your, the way that power comes and true rule comes is upside down. And so what a beautiful moment with the anointing theme gets this little twist. Yeah, yeah.

It's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it is totally awesome. Well, there you go. We received so many great questions more than we can respond to. But thank you for these great ones that were sent in. Yeah, thank you for how thoughtful the questions are that you spend time thinking about them and sending them in. And we wish we could share all of them and give everyone

cold stars. You all deserve them. Okay, so that wraps up Unwanted. We'll have a video on Unwanted coming out soon. Oh, hey, quick note. I just, I realized I never cited this in our conversations, but if anyone is interested in anointing in the ancient world or in the history of the church, a number of questions came up that we didn't have time to get to about how the anointing ritual lived on in Christian church history. Where we started. Yeah, so there's an excellent volume that I learned a lot from in researching for this. It's an edited essay collection called The Oil of Gladness, anointing in the Christian tradition

edited by a church historian Martin Dudley. We'll put a link, I think in the show notes, for the podcast, but it's like everything from anointing in ancient Mesopotamia to the Roman Greek and Roman world to Israel Early church and then like in the history of Catholicism or in orthodoxy or in Eastern orthodoxy or in the Catholic church and Anglicanism and different Protestant. It's everything all in one. So if that's the topic of interest

Check out that volume. That's a really helpful resource. The only one like it that I know of on that theme. Cool. Okay, Tim, you know this podcast is a whole team. A people. Amazing, human beings. Yeah, and from memory, let's see if I can do this.

Okay, I'll help you. Okay, so I can. So producer, Cooper Peltz. You know, Cooper, he does a lot around here. He does a lot. And one thing is, he's producing the entire podcast. But really it's a whole team of people. It's right.

Cooper, yeah, he's got that co-producer, Lindsey Ponder. Lindsey Ponder, really doing some of the work on the ground. Queen of cora-ducer. But then there's a lot of editors involved. Our lead editor has been Dan Gummel who's been around from really the beginning. And then we've got Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza doing edits. Tyler Bailey also does an audio mix, special shout out for that audio mix. And great taste in children's books.

Oh does he? Good conversation about that. You know, this podcast is on all the pod catchers out there. But it's also on our app. And if you go to our app, there's an annotated feature where if you said, Hey, you should check out the oil of gladness. It'll show you a link to that book. And you know who does that? Hannah Wu.

Hannah Wu. Thank you, Hannah. Does the annotations in the end? I think that's it. I think did I get it? Thumbs up from tan. And Bob a project is a crowdfunded nonprofit. We exist to experience a Bible as a unified story

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