The Prophetic Presbyterian & His Narrow Way

Little Girl writes , What Does the Bible Define as Witchcraft? "What does the Christian Bible define as witchcraft?" —Anonymous Honestly? Not many scholars can really pinpoint a lot of the definitions of some words. Jewitches has a fantastic blog about being a Jewish witch that goes over many of these terms, such as  qasam qesem,  a term used for forbidding divination. It literally means "distributing distributions." What the hell is that supposed to mean? It's unfortunately lost to time, given that back in the day, these cultural issues that were clear to the writers never made their way to us. However, other terms, as that blog and as  Discovering Christian Witchcraft  go into, make it clear that  all  of these religions and cultures in southwest Asia—be it Israelite, Akkadian, Assyrian, or even Greek and Roman later on as those empires expanded—really did not like a thing commonly translated into  witchcraft  in modern sources. As those things ...

  A Song of Ascents. 121  I lift up my eyes to the hills.      From where does my help come? 2  My help comes from the  Lord ,      who made heaven and earth. 3  He will not let your foot be moved;      he who keeps you will not slumber. 4  Behold, he who keeps Israel      will neither slumber nor sleep. 5  The  Lord  is your keeper;      the  Lord  is your shade on your right hand. 6  The sun shall not strike you by day,      nor the moon by night. 7  The  Lord  will keep you from all evil;      he will keep your life. 8  The  Lord  will keep      your going out and your coming in      from this time forth and forevermore.

  The Greatness of Mordecai 10  King Xerxes imposed tribute throughout the empire, to its distant shores.   2  And all his acts of power and might, together with a full account of the greatness of Mordecai, whom the king had promoted, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Media and Persia?   3  Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Xerxes, preeminent among the Jews, and held in high esteem by his many fellow Jews, because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews.

9  On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, but now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them.   2  The Jews assembled in their cities in all the provinces of King Xerxes to attack those determined to destroy them. No one could stand against them, because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them.   3  And all the nobles of the provinces, the satraps, the governors and the king’s administrators helped the Jews, because fear of Mordecai had seized them.   4  Mordecai was prominent in the palace; his reputation spread throughout the provinces, and he became more and more powerful. 5  The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hat...

It’s becoming popular in some theological circles to claim that, as a matter of Historical Theology, because the concept of the rapture does begin to appear in the popular “group chat” until the 19th Century, the Bible doesn’t teach it.    By way of reply, that’s on the same level as asserting that since Sola Scriptura & Justification by Faith don’t take center stage until the Reformation, the Bible doesn’t support it.  In addition, as a matter of Historical Theology, it is possible to put together the Table of Contents of a modern day Systematic Theology text by following the topical history of the past 2000 years of Christianity’s history of theological colloquy in light of the structure of a suzerain covenant.     Shema  - Scripture  Historical Prologue  - Theology Proper  General Stipulations  - Christology  Specific Stipulations  - Pneumstology  Covenant Renewal  - Ecclesiology, Anthropology, Sacramentol...