John 5:1 ... IRENAEUS Against ROOD ( i.e., Against Heresies )

IRENAEUS

MICHAEL ROOD

IRENAEUS AGAINST ROOD

(  that is, Against Heresies )

Is Mr. Rood a Gnostic ? What would Irenaeus say ?

A Re-post from October 19, 3017 . . . 

Irenaeus, second century Bishop of the church in Lyons, Gaul ( southern France ) wrote his refutation against Heresies after the heartbreak of seeing two of his brethren in dire spiritual straights due to two heretical sects.

When sent to Rome on a mission, Irenaeus discovered that Eleutherus, the Bishop of Rome, had patronized the Montanists. Then an old friend from the school of Polycarp had embraced the Valentinian heresy. Polycarp had been a teacher of Irenaeus in his youth. Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John, so Irenaeus was VERY CLOSE to the Apostolic Church age.

[ Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, Introductory Note, Irenaeus Against Heresies. p.309, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, MA, 1995, second printing. ]

Thus, Irenaeus embarked upon his major life's work battling the heresies and the Gnostics. The Gnostics took part of the Christian teachings and mingled them with their own thoughts and theories and their so-called "higher knowledge." 

Now, when we read Irenaeus' work and learn that he lived between 130 - 202 AD, we realize that his Scripture quotes are from Scriptures he had available in the Second Century.

In the writings of Irenaeus, we find a serious REFUTATION of Mr. Rood's teachings. Mr. Rood is a Hebrew Roots leader and runs a popular Christian ( ? ) ministry called "A Rood Awakening" on the Internet. 

Unfortunately for all, Mr. Rood is not content to wear Hebrew costumes and teach about ancient Jewish customs and feasts.

He has in fact RE-WRITTEN the Gospels ( plus Acts and Revelation ), pulling them apart and RE-ASSEMBLING them to fit his own preconceived time frame.

That time-frame supposedly fits into the 70 weeks time-frame in Daniel, thus contorting the public ministry of The LORD as found in the New Testament into a 70 week ministry.

However, in order to do this, Mr. Rood has changed and re-written Scriptures so that there are NOT four Passovers recorded during The LORD'S public ministry in his Chronological Gospels, a "Corrected" KJV.  

This is where Irenaeus, 

from the second century, 

enters the picture.

First, though, let us encounter WHAT Mr. Rood did to avoid counting the Passovers correctly. 

Blatantly, Mr. Rood removed John 6:4 ( p. 135, Chron. Gospels ):

And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.

with extremely scant manuscript backing in order to avoid counting that as a Passover. [ See the details of this shifty maneuver in the End Notes of the Post on 9-30-2017, “Yet Another Bad Hebrew Roots Bible Translation by Michael Rood.” ]

Mr. Rood needed to remove that verse in order to maintain his theory of a 70-week public ministry of The LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Mr. Rood also removes the FACT that The LORD ate His+ Last Passover meal with His+ disciples before HE+ suffered .  Thus, Mr. Rood contradicted The LORD'S own identification  of the Passover meal which HE+ ate. ( See p. 240, Chron. Gospels )

See: John 13:1 ; Luke 22:8 , 15 ; Mark 14: 12, 14; and Matthew 26: 17-19 for every verse in which The LORD JESUS HIMSELF+ identifies that Last Passover which HE+ kept with His+ Disciples as the "Passover."   

However, Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons in the second century , ascertains  three Passovers in which The LORD's attendance was duly recorded in Scripture. Irenaeus counts John 5:1 , the un-named Jewish festival, as a Passover.

Mr. Rood , in opposition, sets the un-named feast in John 5:1 as Shavuot ( Pentecost ) in his re-worked time-frame.

John 5:1

After this there was a feast of the Jews;

and JESUS went up to Jerusalem.

Did the Jews go to Jerusalem to keep the feast of Pentecost , Shavuot ? ( Was it required of the Jews to attend ALL the feasts in Jerusalem, as well as Passover ? )

Mr. Rood would have us to believe so, and thus has taken it on his own authority to insert "Shavuot" directly into the Scripture text at John 5:1 ( p. 86, Chron. Gospels) ... 

...with no Manuscript backing whatsoever.

Thus Mr. Rood deftly removes two Passovers from the sacred record. That is convenient, for their inclusion could not attest to a 70 Week ministry of The LORD. 

Here is the Scriptural account that Irenaeus records for John 5:1 and the other Passovers. [ See the Nestle-Aland 26th variants at the end of this article. Very enlightening. ]

From Irenaeus  verbatim , then, with my editor’s notes inserted in parenthesis for clarification.  [ Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, Irenaeus Against Heresies. Book 2, Section 3, pp. 390-391, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, MA, 1995, second printing. ]

3. But it is greatly to be wondered at, how it has come to pass that, while affirming that they [ i.e, the Gnostics, Ed. note ] have found out the mysteries of GOD, they have not examined the Gospels to ascertain how often after His+ baptism the LORD went up, at the time of the Passover, to Jerusalem, in accordance with what was the practice of the Jews from every land, and every year, that they should assemble at this period in Jerusalem, and there celebrate the feast of the Passover.

First of all, after HE+ had made the water wine at Cana of Galilee, HE+ went up to the festival day of the Passover, on which occasion it is written, “For many believed in Him, when they saw the signs which He did,” as John the disciple of the Lord records. [ Ed. note: John 2:13 ]

Then, again, withdrawing Himself [from Judaea], He is found in Samaria; on which occasion, too, He conversed with the Samaritan woman, and while at a distance, cured the son of the centurion [ Ed. Note, “nobleman” in the Greek texts] by a word, saying, “Go thy way, thy son liveth.”

Afterwards He went up, the second time, to observe the festival day of the passover in Jerusalem; on which occasion He cured the paralytic man, who had lain beside the pool thirty-eight years, bidding him rise, take up his couch, and depart. [ Ed. note: John 5: 1 – 5, the un-named feast ].

Again, withdrawing from thence to the other side of the sea of Tiberias, He there seeing a great crowd had followed Him, fed all that multitude with five loaves of bread, and twelve baskets of fragments remained over and above.

[ In reference to John 6:4 , Ed. note ~ Irenaeus does not count this as a Passover that The LORD attended in Jerusalem. ]

Then, when He had raised Lazarus from the dead, and plots were formed against Him by the Pharisees, He withdrew to a city called Ephraim; and from that place, as it is written “He came to Bethany six days before the passover,” and going up from Bethany to Jerusalem, He there ate the passover, and suffered on the day following. [ Ed. note: John 11 - 13 ]

Now, that these three occasions of the passover are not included within one year, every person whatever must acknowledge.

And that the special month in which the passover was celebrated, and in which also the Lord suffered, was not the twelfth, but the first, those men who boast that they know all things, if they know not this, may learn it from Moses.

Their explanation, therefore, both of the year and of the twelfth month has been proved false, and they ought to reject either their explanation or the Gospel; otherwise [this unanswerable question forces itself upon them],

How is it possible that the Lord preached for one year only?

~ End of QUOTE ~

Irenaeus wrote LONG BEFORE our earliest manuscripts were written.

Perhaps he used the Old Latin or Old Syriac manuscripts because he was born in Smyrna ( Asia Minor ) and lived in France; therefore, he may have had access to both of them. ( Perhaps that is why the NOBLEMAN was written as CENTURIAN, John 4:46, in Irenaeus' account ? )

Mr. Rood is , apparently, quite in error in the matter of the Passovers held during The LORD'S ministry AND those which were ATTENDED by HIM+.

Nestle-Aland's ( 26th edition) apparatus for John 5:1 simply has two variants for the feast.

One is in a Byzantine manuscript , 039 - 9th century,  with "azumOn"  in it, the feast of Unleavened Bread. That would indicate the Passover.

The other variant is "skAnopAgia",the feast of tabernacles / booths , found in a 14th century manuscript 131.  This festival would come in the fall, around October.

Neither of these late variants indicate Shavuot ( Pentecost ), as Mr. Rood  affirms.

Mr. Rood, we see, is preaching a Gnostic time-line. Mr. Rood is re-writing and selling Scriptures to fit this Gnostic time-line. The Gnostics believed in a one-year ministry of The LORD.

Is Mr. Rood, then, a Gnostic ?

Irenaeus would call him one.