How much variation is in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament? Is there a difference in the Hebrew between the earliest Old Testament books and the relatively newer books? In other words: are there linguistic differences (syntax, grammar, word usage) in older books like Job, when compared with more recent books like Isaiah?

I am particularly interested in this because of any light it might shed on our modern process of periodically updating our translations to keep pace with current usage of language. Languages are never static. The writing, editing and compiling of the Old Testament canon spans a vast window of time -- long enough for the language(s) it was written in to change dramatically. Do we have any reference points that show how much the language usage was updated during the various redacting processes that the various books went through?

Overview of Hebrew history
Although not specifically asked for, it is profitable to start with a brief overview of the history of the Hebrew language.  For more details on the subject, see A History of the Hebrew Language by A. Sáenz-Badillo (from which the following information comes).
Hebrew is a member of the Semitic language family, a group of about 70 languages historically spoken in Northeast Africa and the Middle East.  According to the field of Linguistics, the Semitic languages derive from a single mother language, labelled as Proto-Semitic.  Although unattested from archaeology, linguists have largely reconstructed the language and believe it was spoken throughout the region from 3500-3000 BC.
Around 3000 BC, the oldest Semitic language, Akkadian split off in the east.  The northwestern (which includes Hebrew) and southern branches split around 2000 BC.  The Canaanite languages in the north then diverged from Arabic in the central region.  In the far north, the cultural center of Damascus eventually enabled the local dialect, Aramaic, to become the lingua franca of the north.  The lack of a major political center to the west meant that none of the other Canaanite dialects achieved dominance.  Thus each area had its own language, although they were mostly mutually intelligible.  (Biblical Hebrew shares ~80% words in common with nearby languages such as Phoenician and Ugaritic.)
It is hard to say exactly when Hebrew became a distinct language.  The oldest accepted inscription dates from 1000 BC, but the archaeological record for the second millennium BC is pretty sparse in the area, so it could have diverged earlier than that.  The oldest form of Hebrew is generally labelled proto-Hebrew or Archaic Biblical Hebrew (ABH).  Conventional wisdom is that this form is represented in the Bible in only a few poetic passages.
The form of Hebrew used from ~950 BC until the start of the Babylonian exile in 586 BC is known as Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH), Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH), or Early Biblical Hebrew (EBH).  During this period, the language shows minimal outside influence.  For example, there are few attested loanwords.  This form of Hebrew is certainly found in the Bible, although there are disagreements about just how much of the Old Testament is written in EBH.  (More on this in later sections.)
The period from the Babylonian exile until about Alexander conquered Judah in 332 BC saw the use of what is known as Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH).  This period shows influence from Persian and to a lesser degree Aramaic.  The majority of the Old Testament is usually assigned to this period. (Again, see below for a critique of this position and further details.)
Hebrew from 332 BC until the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD is labeled Dead-Sea-Scroll Hebrew, so named because it is primarily attested to from the Dead Sea Scrolls.  This period saw heavy influence from Aramaic and some influence from Greek.
The final period of Ancient Hebrew is known as Mishnaic Hebrew and lasts until the 2nd or 3rd century AD, when the language ceased to exist as a spoken language.  Hebrew remained a scholarly language, however, leading to Medieval Hebrew.  Finally, a resurgence in interest in the language in the 19th century led to the creation of Modern Hebrew which again became a living language, culminating in the (re-)creation of the Israeli state in 1948.
It should be noted that the above distinctions and especially the start/end dates are for convenience - people obviously did not just stop speaking a language one day.  Language change is a slow process that is only observable in retrospect.
Difficulties of dating the Old Testament
Having now outlined different periods of Hebrew, one might think it would now be easy to get a rough idea when a book was written.  One would be wrong, as there are several significant difficulties in dating based on linguistics. Among them, Craig Davis (Dating the Old Testament) lists:

The corpus to compare from is extremely small.  In particular, the entirety of the extra-Biblical pre-exhilic text amounts to a couple pages worth.  This makes it very difficult to say how much variation is from different authorial styles and genres and how much is from language change.

It is possible that later writers purposely imitated the style of the older, accepted texts.

There is solid evidence that it was acceptable for scribes to update the text, at minimum in regards to spelling and possibly also word choice and grammar, for a period of time.

Our understanding of the language's history has been derived primarily from the estimated (on other grounds) dates of Biblical books, making linguistic arguments "confirming" such dates in danger of exhibiting circular reasoning.

To this Gary Rendsburg ("Late Biblical Hebrew and the Date of 'P'"), based on the work of Joshua Blau, adds:

The difference between different Biblical texts is unexpectedly slight.  That is, the language is largely uniform despite surely spanning at least several hundred years.

Proposed differences
To simplify things a bit, scholars generally divide the Old Testament into just two categories: Early Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew.  In 1976, Robert Polzin (Late Biblical Hebrew) attempted to systematically define the differences between EBH and LBH by comparing Chronicles with Kings & Samuel.  The approach has some merit: Chronicles being significantly more recent than Kings/Samuel is one of the few relative dates that don't rely on presuppositions and\or the reliability/historicity of internal evidence (Chronicles is certainly dependent on Kings/Samuel).  It also has a significant weakness: Chronicles copies wholesale from Kings in places and also says it is utilizing other sources, so it is hard to say how much of the language is contemporary and how much comes from sources.
Anyway, Polzin's work attracted a significant amount of attention, so it is worth looking at his conclusions.  He proposes 19 differences in LBH as compared to EBH based on his study.
A. Differences not from Aramaic influence:

Radically reduced use of 'et with pronominal suffix.
Increased use of 'et before noun in the nominative case: 'et emphatic.
Expression of possession by prospective pronominal suffix with a following noun, or lə plus noun, or sel plus noun.
Collectives are construed as plurals almost without exception.
A preference for plural forms of words and phrases which the earlier
languages uses in the singular.
The use of an infinitive absolute in immediate connection with a finite verb of the same stem is almost completely lacking in the Chronicler; the infinitive absolute used as a command is not found at all in Chronicles.
The Chronicler's use of the infinitive construct with bə, and kə; as Segal (l927) points out, the later books of the OT show less frequent use of the infinitive construct with bə and kə even in the cases when LBH does use the introductory infinitive with bə, and kə, the usage is different from earlier constructions.
Repetition of a singular word = Latin quivis (to express distributive).
The Chronicler shows a merging (i.e., a tendency to replace) the third feminine plural suffix with the third masculine plural suffix.
The first person singular imperfect with -ah (the lengthened imperfect or cohortative) is found but once in the Chronicler's language.
The use of wayhi greatly recedes in Chronicles and in the younger language.
In appositional relationship the Chronicler prefers to place the substantive before the numeral and almost always puts it in the plural; this is contrary to the older practice of putting the number first.
The Chronicler shows an increased use of the infinitive construct with lə.

B. Differences from Aramaic influence:

In citing material and its weight or measure, the Chronicler often has the order, material weighed or measured + its weight or measure (+ number).
lə is used often as a mark of the accusative.
In min 'from', the nun is often not assimilated before a noun without an article.
The Chronicler uses the emphatic lə before the last element of a list.
In an attributive usage, rabbim is twice placed before the substantive.
The use of 'ad lə, [for 'up to', 'until'].

Few, if any, scholars have accepted all the criteria as being valid markers of EBH vs LBH, as opposed to authorial style (or nothing at all).  However, many have accepted at least some of them.  For example, Rendsburg finds A1, A5, B2, & B3 to be correct; A2, A4, A6, A11, A13, & B5 to be unconvincing and/or likely to be from authorial style; A7 & A8 to be mixed (true for some expressions, invalid for others); and A3, A9, A10, A12, B1, & B4 to be completely invalid.  (For a more detailed statistical analysis of Polzin's conclusions, see "Dating Second Zechariah: A
Linguistic Reexamination.")
Subsequent researchers (Avi Hurvitz is a leader in this area) have come up with other markers by broadening the number of texts for comparison in each category.  Unfortunately, using more texts to form hypotheses leaves less texts to test the hypotheses generated and creates more danger of conclusions thus being entirely circular.
More recent work
The 2003 volume Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young) attempted to provide an overview of current scholarship by presenting essays from people with a variety of views on Biblical Hebrew.  In the process, the work reignited debate in the field about how valid the existing paradigm really was.
The first half of the the work presents the views of those who support the "standard" chronological framework.  These essays primarily focus on loanwords and "Aramaicisms" to support the critical view of most of the Old Testament being dated late.  At least one contributor, Frank Polak, does make an argument on grammar, but it isn't the dominant tactic.  This suggests to me that efforts to define clear, grammatical difference between EBH and LBH, like those outlined in the previous section, have largely failed to produce persuasive evidence.
The second half of the work presents essays by scholars who challenge the "standard" chronological framework.  These authors don't find any substantial difference between Biblical texts (in contrast with, for example, noticeable differences between the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls).  They variously argue that this means that EBH continued to be used in literary circles in the post-exhilic times or that the language changes of the period were primarily phonetic and thus not reflected in the written text.
Further work by Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd (Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts) has proposed a new idea: the so-called EBH and LBH variations don't represent different time periods, but rather dialectal variants that co-existed throughout the Biblical period.  A chief tenant of their argument is that texts typically labelled as LBH almost universally contain some so-called EBH elements, a fact that supporters of the chronological framework readily admit but attribute to intentional "archaicizing" or "patriarchal coloring".
They challenge whether the accepted LBH features actually mean anything or are just the result of statistical anomalies.  Given a small corpus and a predetermination that certain texts are late/early, there are bound to be some features that occur much more often in one set than the other, even if there is no real difference in the language used.  They note that conclusions about dating are often circular arguments. For example, Job is supposed to be a late work, so the small amount of late elements in it proves the author was trying to imitate earlier styles but failed to do so completely, while Kings is supposed to be an early work, so the small amount of late elements it in must be from later scribal changes.  (Their analysis shows that every book of the Old Testament contains at least some so-called LBH features.)
Young et al. suggest such data is more easily explained by multiple dialects of Hebrew being in active use rather than by authors imitating old grammar.  From there, they strongly challenge the idea that the amount of loanwords in a text is a reliable indication of date.  For example, they show that many works universally dated late have few or no loanwords.  They also challenge how reliably one can really determine loanwords from Persian, noting that certain words in early texts could be considered loanwords based on having the same form, but are rejected as such because borrowing is considered impossible for the time period.  (They also say that dating by Aramaicisms is already out-of-style, so spend little time on it.)
Naturally, the work of Young et al. has been challenged by those who hold other views.  For example, the 2012 compilation Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew is largely a response to Young's critiques, featuring essay that seek to defend the chronological framework with more vigorous methodology.  The dialects hypothesis certainly has not displaced the chronology framework, but the work has had a noticeable effect.  Specifically, researchers are generally more cautious about drawing conclusions on linguistic evidence.  For example, Robert Holmstedt (who supports the chronological framework) writes:

In a nutshell, while we [Holmstedt and John Cook] agree with the weaker hypothesis that texts cannot be dated absolutely by linguistic means, we disagree with the stronger hypotheses is that no dating at all is possible and argue that the relative dating of features, and the texts in which they cluster, is possible if the analysis is carried out with a sound linguistic and philological methodology. ("Biblical Hebrew Diachrony (continued, again)")

A very recent work, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability takes yet another approach, seeking to explain the observed differences in style via sociolinguistics.  Author Dong-Hyuk Kim concludes that while to texts to exhibit changes that appear to be time-dependent, it is virtually impossible to use those clues to date a given work because it is impossible to say whether a given author was an early or late adopter of a particular feature.
In summary, I think it is fair to say that the question of how much linguistic difference between books of the Old Testament reflects language change is an open question with no strong consensus one way or another.
Conclusion
To directly answer the question of "How much variation is in the Hebrew Language of the Old Testament?" the answer is not much (after controlling for genre differences - naturally poetry uses quite different syntax than prose.)  Biblical scholars have proposed dividing the Biblical language into two basic categories - Early (pre-exhilic) Biblical Hebrew and Late (post-exhilic) Biblical Hebrew.  A number of markers have been proposed, but there is a wide variation between scholars as to which constitute useful markers and which are false positives.  Nonetheless, for a while this distinction was generally accepted as valid.
More recently, the framework has come under attack on the basis of it being largely based on circular reasoning - text dates were largely decided before the markers were identified and those dates were used to search for the linguistic differences.  Furthermore, the small corpus makes any conclusions quite tentative.  Thus, there is significant doubt about the applicability of using linguistic clues to date the Old Testament.
That is not to say Hebrew did not evolve over the Biblical period - it certainly did.  But, the change was probably not very substantial and what change there was is not well reflected in the Bible because of a combination of literary Hebrew not matching spoken Hebrew, authors possibly using archaic forms on purpose, and scribes possibly updating texts over time.
Sources

"Biblical Hebrew Diachrony (continued, again)" (2011) by Robert Holmstedt

Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (2003) by Ian Young (ed.)

Dating the Old Testament (2007) by Craig Davis

Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability (2013) by Dong-Hyuk Kim

A History of the Hebrew Language (1993) by A.Sáenz-Badillos

Late Biblical Hebrew (1976) by Robert Polzin

"Late Biblical Hebrew and the Date of 'P'" (1980) by Gary Rendsburg

Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (2009) by Ian Young, Robert Rezetko, and Martin Ehrensvaerd

We currently use Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament Text which dates to around 9th/10th century AD. This Hebrew in Hebrew Masoretic Text is very different from the Hebrew used by Moses in Old Testament Period. Also, Hebrew Masoretic Text contain vowel markings. There were no vowel markings in Old Testament Period.

It must be noted that Aramaic became the language of Jews after Babylonian captivity.

There are scholars who admit that Aramaic was the language of Jews during Maccabean period. Here is an example from Book of Maccabees.

1 Maccabees 12:36-37 (Septuagint) - "And making the walls of Jerusalem higher, and raising a great mount between the tower and the city, for to separate it from the city, that so it might be alone, that men might neither sell nor buy in it. Upon this they came together to build up the city, forasmuch as part of the wall toward the brook on the east side was fallen down, and they repaired that which was called Caphenatha."

According to Book "City of Jerusalem" by Colonel C. R Conder (Pg. 100), Caphenatha is Aramaic word for a "heap." Notice "tha" in Caphenatha. "tha" in Caphenatha is Aramaic definite article on a feminine noun in an emphatic state (Introduction to Syriac by Wheeler Thackston, Page 44).

Aramaic Peshitta Tanakh is Old Testament written in Aramaic used in first century Israel. This was the Old Testament used in First Century Israel due to the fact that Aramaic was the spoken language of first century Israel (Acts 1:19, Antiquities XX XI).

Let me point out the confusions and errors in Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament Text solved by Peshitta Tanakh. This will also give a visual idea of how many variations and errors are there in Hebrew Masoretic Text.

Here are some of the errors and contradictions in Hebrew Masoretic Text cleared by Peshitta Tanakh.

Exodus 6:20 (KJV) - And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.

Exodus 6:20 (NIV) - Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.

Exodus 6:20 (1917 JPS Tanakh English translation of Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of the life of Amram were a hundred and thirty and seven years.“

Is this true? Well, Let’s look at Peshitta Tanakh (Aramaic Old Testament) and also Septuagint.

Exodus 6:20 (Samuel Bagster & Sons' Translation from Septuagint) - "And Ambram took to wife Jochabed the daughter of his father's brother, and she bore to him both Aaron and Moses, and Mariam their sister; and the years of the life of Ambram were a hundred and thirty-two years.“

Exodus 6:20 (George Lamsa’s translation of Peshitta Tanakh)- "And Amram took his uncle’s daughter Jokhaber, and she bore him Aaron, Moses, and Miriam; and the years of the life of Amram were a hundred and thirty-seven years."

Lamsa wrote "uncle’s daughter“ instead of writing the daughter of his father's brother. Aramaic word "Doda" that refers to an uncle on father's side.

Let’s also look at John Wycliffe’s translation.

Exodus 6:20 (John Wycliffe’s translation) – “Forsothe Amram took a wijf, Jocabed, douytir of his fadris brother, and sche childide to hym Aaron, and Moises, and Marie; and the yeeris of lijf of Amram weren an hundred and seuene and thretti.”

Here is a site for Wycliffe's translation of Exodus.

Compared to Peshitta Tanakh and Wycliffe’s translation, the difference with Septuagint is that it says the years of the life of Ambram were a hundred and thirty-two years.

Peshitta Tanakh and Wycliffe’s translation agree with Hebrew Masoretic Text about Ambram’s age.
Genesis 2:2 (1917 JPS Tanakh English translation of Hebrew Masoretic Text) -  “And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.”

Let’s look at Septuagint.

Genesis 2:2 (Translation from Septuagint) – “And God finished on the sixth day his works which he made, and he ceased on the seventh day from all his works which he made.”

Genesis 2:2 (George Lamsa’s translation of Peshitta Tanakh) – “And on the sixth day God, finished his works which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made.”

In Hebrew Masoretic Text, it says "seventh day" (in Genesis 2:2), is in contradiction to Exodus 20:11 (in Hebrew Masoretic Text) where it says "six days."

But Peshitta Tanakh has no such contradiction.
Exodus 20:7 (look at the differences below)

Peshitta Tanakh - "You shall not swear falsely in the name of MarYA your Alaha, for MarYA will not consider him innocent who swears falsely in his Name... for MarYA made the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is with them in six days, and rested on the seventh day; for that reason, Alaha blessed the seventh day and made it holy {or, sanctified it}."

LXX - (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord thy God will not acquit him that takes his name in vain... For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and all things in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it. - Brenton)

Hebrew Masoretic - You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain; for Yahweh will not allow to go unpunished he who takes his name in vain... For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all which is in them. And he rested on the seventh day; thus, Yahweh blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.

KJV (King James Version) - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain... For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
2 Kings 8:26 & 2 Chronicles 22:2

2 Kings 8:26 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri king of Israel."

2 Chronicles 22:2 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri."

2 King 8:26 of Hebrew Masoretic Text, it says Ahaziah was 22 years old. But in 2 Chronicles 22:2, it says Ahaziah was 42 years old.

Does Peshitta Tanakh has this contradiction?

2 Kings 8:26 - Lamsa Translation of Peshitta Tanakh

Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.

2 Chronicles 22:2 - Lamsa Translation of Peshitta Tanakh

Twenty-two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.

Peshitta Tanakh clears the contradiction found in Hebrew Masoretic Text.

Did Joram marry the daughter of Ahab or the sister of Ahab?

2 Kings 8:16-18 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "And in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being the king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign. Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab; for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD."

2 Kings 8:24 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) -  "And Joram slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David; and Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead."

Through this, we know that Athaliah was the wife of Joram and their son was Ahaziah. But in 2 Kings 8:26 & 2 Chronicles 22:2, it says Athaliah was the daughter of Omri and Athaliah was the mother of Ahaziah. But in 2 Kings 8:16-18, we read Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab. In 1 Kings 16:29-30, we know that Ahab was the son of Omri.

What does Peshitta Tanakh say about this contradiction?

2 Kings 8:16-18 (Lamsa Translation of Peshitta Tanakh) - "And in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel. Joram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign. He was thirty-two years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab; for the sister of Ahab was his wife; and he did evil in the sight of the LORD."

Unlike 2 Kings 8:16-18 of Hebrew Masoretic Text, Peshitta Tanakh points out that Joram married a sister of Ahab. Through this, the contradictions in Hebrew Masoretic Text are cleared by Peshitta Tanakh. Ahab was the son of Omri and Athaliah was the daughter of Omri.
Was Jehoiachin  8 years old (2Chronicles 36:9) or 18 years old (2Kings 24:8) when he began to reign?

2 Kings 24:8 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign; and he reigned in Jerusalem three months; and his mother’s name was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem."

2 Chronicles 36:9 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD."

It says Jehoiachin was eighteen years old in 2 Kings 24:8 and Jehoiachin was eight years old in 2 Chronicles 36:9. What does Peshitta Tanakh say about this contradiction?

2Chronicles 36:9 (Lamsa translation of Peshitta Tanakh) - "Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD."

2Kings 24:8 (Lamsa Translation of Peshitta Tanakh) - "Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Eliathan of Jerusalem."

Both 2 Chronicles 36:9 and 2 Kings 24:8 says Jehoiachin was eighteen years old. This contradiction in Hebrew Masoretic Text is cleared by Peshitta Tanakh.
1 Samuel 13:5

1 Samuel 13:5 (Hebrew Masoretic Text) - "And the Philistines assembled themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude; and they came up, and pitched in Michmas, eastward of Beth-aven."

There are 30,000 chariots. But there are only 6000 horsemen? There is something strange here.

Let's look at Peshitta Tanakh.

1 Samuel 13:5 (Lamsa Translation of Peshitta Tanakh) - "And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, three thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude; and they came up and encamped in Michmash, east of Beth-el."

In Peshitta Tanakh, it says there were 3000 chariots instead of 30,000 chariots in Hebrew Masoretic Text. This makes much more sense.

In Peshitta Tanakh, it says Beth-el. But Hebrew Masoretic Text has Beth-aven.

Lamsa translation of Peshitta Tanakh is the only current available English Translation of Peshitta Tanakh. His translation is alright. It’s not great.

Some People may ask - Wasn't Greek the language of first century Israel?

Well, let's look at what Jewish Historian Josephus says.

Josephus wrote:

  "I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning; on which account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors with great patience to obtain this learning, there have yet hardly been so many as two or three that have succeeded therein, who were immediately well rewarded for their pains." - Antiquities of Jews XX, XI

Jewish Wars (Book 1, Preface, Paragraph 1) - "I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians. Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work]."

Also note the names of our New Testament English Bible - "Bar"tholomew, "Bar"abbas, "Bar"nabbas, "Bar"sabbas, "Bar" Jesus, Simon "Bar" Jonah, "Bar" Timaeus, etc.

Aramaic word Bar means Son. In Hebrew, Ben means Son. Even Rabbis point out that "Bar" in Bar Mitzvah comes from Aramaic.

According to Dead Sea Scrolls archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, Aramaic was the language of Jews until Simon Bar Kokhba tried to revive Hebrew and make it as the official language of Jews during Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 AD). Yigael Yadin noticed the shift from Aramaic to Hebrew during the time of Bar Kokhba revolt.

In Book "Bar Kokhba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome" Yigael Yadin notes, "It is interesting that the earlier documents are written in Aramaic while the later ones are in Hebrew. Possibly the change was made by a special decree of Bar-Kokhba who wanted to restore Hebrew as the official language of the state"(page 181).

In Book "A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony among Priests, Sages, and Laymen (Judaism and Jewish Life)" by Sigalit Ben-Zion (Page 155), Yadin remarked: "it seems that this change came as a result of the order that was given by Bar Kokhba, who wanted to revive the Hebrew language and make it the official language of the state."

According to Book "Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World" written by Kimberly B. Stratton (p. 232), Yigael Yadin suggests that Bar Kokhba was trying to revive Hebrew by decree as part of his messianic ideology.

For more infos on the differences, check this link - http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Peshitta_Tanakh


What qualifies the 3 entities of the Trinity as one? Follow up to this question: (If A = x and B = x and C = x then why isn't A = B = C? (Trinity)

What qualifies the 3 entities of the Trinity as one?

Now that the concept of the Trinity is more comprehensible to me - that the Trinity is not one entity with three different aspects, but rather three entities with different personalities with a shared essence and relationship with each other (perichoresis)

There's a very minor yet SIGNIFICANT semantic nuance. My friends and I are human (human as in adjective, denoting our attributes), but we are not ONE human (human as in noun, an entity that possesses the quality of being human). My friends and I share the attribute of being human, but we are not one human.

If I for instance take three laptops of the same model, I could say that they are the same laptop, in the sense that they are the same model - created by the same manufacturer, share the same components and OS. However, we are still talking about three laptops, not one.

As such, Christians call the Son, the Father, the Holy Ghost God (God as in adjective, denoting the attributes of divinity to each respectively), but the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost wouldn't be ONE God, would they?
(Of course I understand Christians cannot proclaim to believe in three Gods, but is this logically consistent?)

Another analogy: Say I abolished the power hierarchy between all the Greek deities and gave them the same essence, but kept their specified roles and relationship with each other. I claim that they are one, but for all practical purposes they really are not "one". That's how I understand the Trinity

Then by which standard do we classify them as one? What is it that makes them out to be one? in which sense are they one? Is it the close-knit relationship they exhibit with each other?

This link shared in the comments conveys my understanding of the Trinity pretty well

If I may interject my personal opinion, I believe Christians are trying too hard to market this as monotheism. This may not be tritheism per se, but this is not monotheism either, the Trinity deserves its own theological category.

EDIT: The attached question is not the same as mine. The attached question merely seeks an explanation of the general concept of the Trinity, while I request people to directly address the question as to why/how the triune personalities of the Trinity constitute one God.

What qualifies the 3 entities of the Trinity as one?

There are not three entities or beings—three Gods. There are, within, or intrinsic to, the one God (or rather the one God is definitionally in some respect three; namely, He is tri-personal) three 'somethings.' They happen to be revealed to be quite Personal.

Put simply, 'trinity' describes something of the intrinsic nature of God; 'one' describes the numeric total of essences that are called God and have the attributes of God: there being but one, (Deut 6:4) who is known variously by titles YHVH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, etc.

So they are one because they are intrinsic to each other and co-definitional (like how, analogically, 'Father' is meaningless without 'Son')—each no less than the other being definitional to the one essence of God: God is eternally three in some sense, yet in that He is but one, only God, He is one and only.

The name or title 'God' can, then, understandably, and readily, be attributed to any of the Persons of the Holy Trinity because each is no less God than the other, since they are God for the same ultimate reason: their essence, nature, being is one and the same: the divine and eternal, ineffable Deity, the only true God.

Scripture happens to use a convention whereby the Father, since He is the ontological beginning of the Godhead (not the temporal—the Son and the Spirit are not created, especially since they are eternal, but rather 'Son' simply 'logically' or 'onotologically' follows 'Father' and so forth: the economy of the Godhead is such that the Son and the Spirit recieve being God from the Father, not that they are created) is used to simply refer to the one God. But since the Son and the Spirit are directly of the same substance of the Father, they are just as much God as He: there was no time when the Father was God without the Son and the Spirit being God.

There is 'one' God because 'one' describes not the number of Persons God has, naturally, but the number of Gods. There is but one God, who is, eternally, tri-personal. And ineffable, so that all excercises in forcing God to conform to the current human understanding of the world etc. is quite futile. In fact, we only know God by analogy alone.

Declaring the trinity is one, is the only way to try and justify worshipping someone other than the God of Israel in Judaism while still holding on to a remnant of Judaism as it's foundation.

Jesus prays numerous times to the creator calling him the "father" or "God" (Mathew 6:9-13, Mathew 11:25-26, luke 6:12, Luke 22:32, Luke 23:34, John 11:41-42, John 12:27-28, John 17:1-26)

Either we're to believe that Jesus has a mental disorder that he prays to himself in the third person going by a different name, or he's praying to someone other than himself.


Can there be free will in heaven? The most common explanation I heard from Christians for the theodicy is that suffering is caused inevitably by the free will of humans. The argument is essentially that a world without suffering is impossible when you allow free will, as you can't prevent humans from causing harm to each other.

In heaven, there is supposed to be no suffering at all. How can that notion be reconciled with the free will argument? Do the humans in heaven have no free will, and are therefore unable to cause harm to each other? Or is it possible to create a world without suffering even when granting free will to the humans living in it?

Once we attain heaven, we will be given a new nature, purged of our old sinful nature.

2 Peter 1:4 (NIV)

  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Once we escape this corruption, we will gain the sinless state of Jesus.

1 John 3:5-6 (NIV)

  5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NASB)

  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Now, while Jesus was free from sin, he also had free will:

John 10:17-18 (NIV)

  17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

So, there will be no sin in heaven.  This isn't because we don't have free will, but rather because we simply won't sin.  It won't be in our nature.  Just like now, it's not in our nature to fly.  So then, it won't be in our nature to sin.

However, there will be freedom in heaven:

2 Corinthians 3:17 (NASB)

  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Clearly, there is freedom in the Lord.  We don't loose our freedom simply because we're in heaven.

One final note is a simple call to logic:  How can heaven be paradise if we lose our freedom and free will?

One way to think about this is a world where sin isn't an option.  Partially because it's not in our nature and partially because it's not available to us.  Imagine, for example, life in the Garden of Eden, but without the snake.

There is no reason to sin.  There is no need to sin.  There is no desire to sin.  Yet there is complete free will.

(Note that I give this as a simple way to reconcile this in our minds, not as an actual answer.  Because in truth, free will allows for sin.  But, in heaven there will not be any sin--per my answer above.)

When I think of death, I like to think of the "Soul separating from the body" image. What would it be like? Well, no ingoing or outgoing information since I no longer have a body to do these things with. With the exception of God, because He communicates through the soul, not the body. Once this exclusive connection to God has taken place, I can lose any desire for evil and I obtain true freedom.

This doesn't exclude pain or suffering, but that depends on what God and I have to "say to each other". If I have done Good all my life, my thoughts will be Good and I won't "live" with regret. I would have no desire to sin (nor the possibility). Also God will be happy and proud of me. This would be Paradise (Free will, no suffering). If I have done Bad all my life, I will spend eternity regretting it. Also, God might be kind of angry, hence the possible suffering (Hell: Forget the free will here, I suppose)

P.S I have absolutely no "literature" to back this up


In which language did Pontius Pilate communicate with Jesus? According to this post:

  Both Aramaic and Hebrew were in use in the Land at the time of Jesus. However, while we cannot say one predominated, we can say that Mishnaic Hebrew was very much a living language used by people of all walks of life in Judea and Galilee.

So, maybe we are safe to assume that Jesus spoke these languages.

Yet, Pontius Pilate was a Roman, who would have spoken Latin. Would he have been able to speak Hebrew? And as such, in the Gospels' account of Pilate's encounter with Jesus, did they speak in Hebrew? Is there any evidence, or perhaps tradition on this?

There is reason to believe that the language Pilate communicated with Jesus was Greek. After all it was the language of commerce at that time throughout the Mediterranean world. Let us not forget that Pilate's inscription on the Title of the Cross was written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. "This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was near to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin." (John 19:20)

  How do we know what languages people actually spoke in Roman Judaea? We have a lot of written evidence from the region that is contemporary with the era of Jesus: papyri, inscriptions, graffiti, and historical texts. From hundreds of examples surviving from Roman Judaea, we can easily document which languages people understood and used both in official transactions and in their daily lives. The ancient evidence is very clear on this point: the everyday language spoken by the Jewish and Samaritan populations of Palestine in the time of Jesus was Aramaic, while the official language for administrative communication was Greek.

  While Roman soldiers and officials from Rome probably did speak Latin
  among themselves, they would have used Greek to communicate with members of the local ruling class, such as Herod’s family and the Jewish high priests. - Two Archaeologists Comment on The Passion of the Christ

Here is more along this line of thinking.

  In which language did Pilate and Jesus likely converse during Jesus's trial?

  Almost certainly in Greek.

  The first language of almost all Palestinian Jews in the 1st century was Aramaic. However evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish pseudepigraphic writings, inscriptions on ossuaries (limestone bone burial boxes), etc. show that Greek was spoken there as well. In the Mediterranean world at that time, most people were bilingual (Greek + their native language) so that they could do business with all the other ethnic groups in the Empire.

  Jesus grew up in tiny Nazareth where everyone spoke Aramaic, but lived just over the ridge from Sephoris, a large, well-to-do city where Greek was the common language. As a small-time carpenter (Gk., “tekton,” actually more like a craftsman) he would need to speak Greek to snag his share of the business there. Barring a miracle, it wouldn’t have been very cultured or even necessarily grammatically correct, but it would be understandable to another Greek speaker.

  Pilate on the other hand, given what we know of him from the Jewish writers Josephus and Philo, most likely would not have put forth the effort to learn Aramaic, the language of a people he had no respect for. Latin was actually not widely spoken at all, being confined mainly to it’s original home Latium. Outside of Rome, it was mainly used for official inscriptions and, occasionally, military orders to fellow Romans.

  But he too would have spoken Greek. So, as the scholar Joseph A. Fitzmeyer wrote:

  “In what language did Jesus and Pilate converse? There is no mention of an interpreter. Since there is little likelihood that Pilate, a Roman, would have been able to speak either Aramaic or Hebrew, the obvious answer is that Jesus spoke Greek at his trial before Pilate.”

The notion that Yahusha Hamashiach would have spoke Greek based on business is not what he taught in the scripture. Yahusha, stated that he was about his Fathers business: Luke 2:
49 And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
The notion that the king would despise learning the language of people he hated is true:
This can also be said for Yahusha, why would he learn the language of a culture that were considered pagan and ungoldy? Why would he attempt to study their culture and language.
Even the followers of Christ were considered to be unlearned men, unlearned men would be known as not knowing Greek, Paul was the first figure that bible portrayed as being a learned man:
Acts 4
13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.
Paul's Education and Roman citizenship:
Acts 22:3
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but raised in this city. I was educated at the feet of Gamaliel in strict conformity to the law of our fathers. I am just as zealous for God as any of you here today.
Now when the centurion heard this, he went and reported it to the chief captain, saying, "Do you realize what you are about to do? For this man is a Roman." And when the chief captain came up, he said to him, "Tell me, are you a Roman?" And he said, 'Yes.' (Acts 22: 25 - 27).
In all, Yahusha Hamashiach, would have equally have been resistant to learning from a culture that did not respect him or his people.
We also have to remember Christ refused to speak to the king:
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10 “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
In all, why would God speak Hebrew and Aramaic throughout the Old Testament just to change his language in the New even when speaking to kings? Even in the Book of Daniel, God wrote letters on the wall that had to be translated, God doesn't change who he is for worldy kingdoms:
Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.
25 “This is the inscription that was written:
mene, mene, tekel, parsin
26 “Here is what these words mean:
Mene[e]: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
27 Tekel[f]: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
28 Peres[g]: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”


From where did Cain get his wife? I want to know that where did Cain Son of Adam and Eve get his wife? As there was nobody except Adam and Eve after he killed Abel.

As there was nobody except Adam and Eve after he killed Abel.

Some source of this claim? Because Genesis says:

  And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters (Gen 5, 4).

According to apocryphal Book of Jubilees, Cain's wife's name was Awan.

From Genesis 4:14 ESV

  14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from
  your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on
  the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

This appears to suggest that there were "others" besides Adam and Eve.  While someone could take the story of Adam and Eve literally as the first humans, it doesn't imply that they were the only humans - just the only humans that we talk about.

Therefore Cain's wife MAY have been one of the "others".  Else there would have been an incestuous relationship:

  Cain was the first born son of Adam and Eve, and Abel was the second.
  In Genesis 4 we read how Cain kills his brother and is sent east of
  Eden where he marries a woman and “lays” with her. Because Adam and
  Eve were the first humans – assuming ONLY humans – Cain’s wife
  was his sister – and, consequently, all of the early Biblical
  relationships were incestuous (with the exception of Adam and Eve).


Who is God in the Old Testament? (Trinity) I had always thought the Entity of the Trinity that appears in the Old Testament was God the Father. However, upon re-reading several passages, I am beginning to think it might be Jesus Christ.
The Referenced Verses, John 6:46 and John 14:6 - Which say 'Not that anyone has seen the father, except he who is from God (Jesus Christ)' and 'Nobody can come to the father except through me(Jesus Christ)' (ESV)
From these Statements from Christ, I am inclined to believe the 'LORD' in the old testament was actually Jesus Christ, and not the Father - as I've always assumed. If Nobody has ever come to the Father, or seen the Father except through Christ - Moses must not have been interacting with the Father, Right?
Please let me know what you think of this. Did the Old Testament ever make specific reference that God was God the Father?
Thank you

Whoever sees Jesus sees God (John 14:9).

John 1:18 (ESV)
No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

No one has seen God. Jesus , who is God (by nature), is the One who reveals God (the Father) to us.
In the Old Testament, God said that no one can see him and live yet other accounts said that people did see him and they lived. The one whom they saw was the angel of the Lord, who was the pre incarnate Christ. This is not to say that Jesus was ontologically an angel. The word 'angel' (ανγγελος - messenger) refers to function.
Justin Martyr in the second century identified the angel of the Lord as the pre incarnate Christ.

"Moreover, I consider it necessary to repeat to you the words which narrate how He who is both Angel and God and Lord, and who appeared as a man to Abraham, and who wrestled in human form with Jacob, was seen by him when he fled from his brother Esau." (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Justin Martyr)

The Lord Jesus in the New Testament revealed was described as the following which consistently identifies him with the God whom ancient Israelites saw in the Old Testament:
(a) Christ is the image of the invisible God. (Col 1:15)
(b) whoever sees Christ sees God (John 14:9)
(b) Christ himself is God by nature (John 1:1, 1:18 cf. Col 2:9).
(c) Those who has seen Christ actually lived (John 6:40).

John 6:40 7(ESV)
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Conclusion
Based on the New Testament and Ante-Nicene father, the Second Person of the Trinity is the Lord God who appeared in the form of a man to the Jewish patriarchs.

Who is the God of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) ?
YHVH.

Exodus 20:2 - "I am YHVH, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." (אָֽנֹכִ֨י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הֽוֹצֵאתִ֩יךָ֩ מֵאֶ֨רֶץ מִצְרַ֜יִם מִבֵּ֣ית עֲבָדִ֗ים)

In Bereishit (Genesis) 1:1, we read the word "Elohim" (אֱלֹהִ֑ים) who created the Heavens and the Earth (הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ ) - referring to YHVH (יְהֹוָ֔ה) - who describes Himself in Shemot (Exodus) 3:6 as "the God of Avraham, Yitsaq, and Yaqov" ( אֱלֹהֵ֧י אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִצְחָ֖ק וֵֽאלֹהֵ֣י יַֽעֲקֹ֑ב).

*In Tehillim (Psalms) 22:2, we read the word "Eli" (אֵלִ֣י) meaning "my God". And we read in Tehillim (Psalms) 22:3 the word "Eloi" (אֱלֹהַ֗י) which also means "my God" in reference to YHVH (יְהֹוָ֔ה) in verse 20 of Psalm 22 in the Tanakh.

Psalm 22 is sung by Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth on the cross in [ Matthew 27:46 ] to testify who the God of the Old & New Testament is.

In the Tanakh, YHVH demonstrates behavior towards Yisrael that is both Fatherly (Psalm 103:13) and Motherly (Isaiah 49:15):

As a Father to Yisrael:
[Psalms 103:13]
"As a father has mercy on sons, YHVH has mercy on those who fear Him." (כְּרַחֵ֣ם אָ֖ב עַל־בָּנִ֑ים רִ֘חַ֥ם יְ֜הֹוָ֗ה עַל־יְרֵאָֽיו )

As a Mother to Yisrael:
[Isaiah 49:15] "Shall a mother ignore her nursing baby (הֲתִשְׁכַּ֚ח אִשָּׁה֙ עוּלָ֔הּ) Or from having mercy on the Son of her womb? (מֵֽרַחֵ֖ם בֶּן־בִּטְנָ֑הּ) Perhaps these she may forget, but I will not forget you. (גַּם־אֵ֣לֶּה תִשְׁכַּ֔חְנָה וְאָֽנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א אֶשְׁכָּחֵֽךְ) ".

Why is Jesus sitting at God's Right-Hand in Acts 7:56?
The Hebrew word "Salvation" (Yeshua, ישׁוּעָ) from the Tanakh relates to the right-hand of YHVH. King David explicitly states this in Tehillim (Psalms) 18:36 [MT] : "You have given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has supported me" ( וַתִּתֶּן-לִי, מָגֵן יִשְׁעֶךָ וִימִינְךָ תִסְעָדֵנִי) ; Psalm 18:35 [KJV] "Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath holden me up".
The Right-Hand of YHVH redeems and delivers God's children by providing "Salvation".
In Hebrew - Tehillim (Psalms) 138:7 [MT] "If I walk in the midst of distress, You revive me; against the wrath of my enemies, You stretch forth Your hand and Your right hand saves me." (אִם־אֵלֵ֚ךְ | בְּקֶ֥רֶב צָרָ֗ה תְּחַ֫יֵּ֥נִי עַ֚ל אַ֣ף אֹֽ֖יְבַי תִּשְׁלַ֣ח יָדֶ֑ךָ וְת֖וֹשִׁיעֵ֣נִי יְמִינֶֽךָ ); Psalm 138:7 [KJV] "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me."
In biblical context, the spiritual concept of Yeshua (Jesus) in regards to Hebrew theology is literally at the right side of the Father committed in the Right-Hand of YHVH to save His people.
In proving to the spiritual location of God's "Salvation" in His Right-Hand, we can examine the Masoretic Text of Tehillim (Psalm) 98:1-2 "A Song. Sing to the Lord a new song, for He performed wonders; His right hand and His holy arm have saved Him." ( מִזְמ֡וֹר שִׁ֚ירוּ לַֽיהֹוָ֨ה | שִׁ֥יר חָדָ֗שׁ כִּֽי־נִפְלָא֥וֹת עָשָׂ֑ה הוֹשִֽׁיעָה־לּ֥וֹ יְ֜מִינ֗וֹ וּזְר֥וֹעַ קָדְשֽׁוֹ)
"The Lord has made known His salvation; to the eyes of the nations He has revealed His righteousness." ( הוֹדִ֣יעַ יְ֖הֹוָה יְשֽׁוּעָת֑וֹ לְעֵינֵ֥י הַ֜גּוֹיִ֗ם גִּלָּ֥ה צִדְקָתֽוֹ).
His Yeshua (Jesus) has been revealed by the works of His Right-Hand.
This is why Salvation recommits Its Spirit back into God's Hands in Luke 23:46.  This truth is revealed later to Stephen in Acts 7:56 [KJV] "And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God."


What is the origin of the "religion vs. relationship" dichotomy? These days the word "religion" often has a bad connotation.  Christians (including myself) often emphasize that they have a "relationship" with Jesus, not that they are "religious."

But this doesn't seem to be the case if we look back a little ways in church history.  John Calvin wrote The Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, in the 16th century.  More recently than that, J. Gresham Machen wrote The Origin of Paul's Religion (1921).  These positive references to the word seem to be in line with James 1:27, which says:

  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (ESV)

But somewhere along the way, the word "religion" started getting compared negatively to a "relationship."  So here's my question: who was the first Christian theologian to place the words "religion" and "relationship" in sharp contrast, with a negative connotation for "religion"?

Note that I'm not interested in those who criticize "false religion" or "impure religion" or "mere religion" or the like – just those who treat "religion," unmodified, as negative and in sharp contrast to "relationship."

I've heard it claimed that it was Billy Graham, which seems plausible, but I'd love to see a published source indicating that he or someone else was the originator of this now-popular dichotomy.

Summary

The dichotomy started when some Christians (notably, evangelicals) began to define "religion" along the lines of this one:

  Religion is a set of rules that people must follow in order to obtain God’s blessing.

Since Christians are saved by grace (and not by works), Christianity would not be a religion according to this definition.  Source: Dictionary of Christianese.

The rest of this answer attempts to trace possible origins of the re-definition of religion which in turn produces this dichotomy.  Disclosure: Key insights in this answer (Karl Barth, John Stott, metonymy) I obtained from Dr. Randal Rauser's Christian Post newspaper opinion article which is worth reading word by word.

Dichotomy as competing definitions

"Christianity as religion" has been contrasted not only with "Christianity as relationship" but also with "Christianity as the gospel" or with "Christianity as Christ".  The common motivation is clearly to zoom into the essence of Christianity by excluding other elements of religion, as James A Fowler, a pastor and PhD in Biblical Studies, attempted to do in his 1998 book Christianity is NOT a religion shown by the table of contents (pdf here).  The book started with this epigram:

  Christianity has mistakenly been defined and described as a religion in which morality and belief-system in correspondence to the Book are regarded as the basis of the role-playing and problem-solving of the Christian life.

  Not true!

  Christianity is Christ!

and then delve into these chapters: Christianity is Not Religion, Christianity is Not a Book-Religion, Christianity is Not Morality, Christianity is Not a Belief-System, Christianity is Not Epistemology, etc.

At the end of the day, it's a matter of definition as this blog article and another article argued the reverse position of how historically (as the OP pointed out) people have been referring to Christianity as a "religion".  Both articles in fact advocate that we should refrain from spreading "Christianity is not a religion" because by doing so we will lose the status of Christianity as "the one true religion", or "the religion of religions".

Because it's a matter of definition that no official institution seems to promote, the problem of tracing the origin of the dichotomy will be similar to tracing how certain idioms became popular.  So this becomes a problem of etymology, and the tools to find the origin will be similar to what lexicographers use when building an etymological dictionary.

Dichotomy usage in the wild

While doing research for this answer, I came across the Dictionary of Christianese - The casual slang of the Christian church... authoritatively defined.  I think the phrase "Christianity is a relationship not a religion" can indeed be seen as a "Christianese" (delightfully constructed word, BTW), so naturally the dictionary has an entry for it, prefaced by a blog-article style introduction which like the 2 articles above is also arguing that it's a matter of definition.  True to its name, the official entry has usage citations from published sources (journals, books, encyclopedias, etc.) starting from 1958 as the earliest citation.

  1958 Episcopal Church, Diocese of Fond du Lac J. of the Annual Convention 86 : May we go forward remembering that Christianity is not a religion which merely lays upon us weak, human beings the hopeless task of living an impossibly good life helped only by the example of a man who lived a perfect human life 2,000 years ago, but rather that Christianity is a relationship to God whereby He communicates to us His strength and vitality which enables us to live on a higher plane.

It also includes a citation from Billy Graham as well (as the OP suspected):

  1971 Graham The Jesus Generation 148 : [Consider] the novel thought that Christianity was not so much a “religion” as a relationship with a Person.

Dichotomy origin in specific definitions of religion

Can we do better in finding the earlier origin of the dichotomy, maybe not so much in the explicit use of the phrase "Christianity is a relationship not a religion" but a thought, a concept, a distinction, or an idea that prominent theologians used to construct a thesis related to "religion" which in turn lend itself to the dichotomy?  So this becomes a task that Bible background / theological dictionaries tackle, such as articles describing what Religion / Law / Repentance / Messiah / After-life meant to various groups of people around the time of Jesus.  The articles typically will also address a cluster of ideas around those concepts, citing key documents, movements, or people that could have contributed.  Therefore we are looking for theologians with widespread influence who could have contributed to defining "religion" in a way that makes it contrary to "relationship".

Karl Barth as a possible origin

Dr. Randal Rauser, a professor of Historical Theology writing the Aug 2019 opinion article I mentioned above, offered an implied definition of "religion" which could serve as the opposite of "relationship" in the dichotomy, and thought that Karl Barth used that definition in his 1918 Romans commentary:

  The speaker, in this case, is clearly not adhering to a conventional dictionary definition of “religion”. Instead, she is invoking a rhetorical use of the word, one popular among some Christians. It seems to me that it can be defined roughly like this:

  religion. n. Those beliefs one holds and actions one undertakes to address the human problem and relate rightly to ultimate reality which are inconsistent with the revealed beliefs and practices commended by God and which seek to redress that human problem primarily through human effort.

  This usage was famously invoked by Karl Barth in his much-lauded theological reflection on the book of Romans in which he “translated” Paul’s reference to the Law as “religion”. Thus, in Barth’s calculus, the law/religion are what we do to relate rightly to God while Jesus Christ is what God does to relate rightly to us.

For those who want to dig deeper into Karl Barth's contribution to this understanding of "religion", I found these 3 helpful resources which can serve as a starting point:

Karl Barth's commentary on the Romans (first English translation edition was in 1918).  This OCR'd PDF scan is the 6th edition of the English translation (1932).
2015 notes on Karl Barth's thoughts on religion referencing the Romans commentary as well as Church Dogmatics (of course) plus other scholarly references by a retired Methodist pastor George Plasterer.
A 2012 paper on Karl Barth's position on world religions, in terms of the common threefold typology (exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism) used in religious studies: Karl Barth's Theology of Religion -- An Analysis of the Church Dogmatics I & IV.

John Stott as a popularizer

The same Christian Post opinion article plus others I found on the net points to popular quotes attributed to John Stott, like the following, which seems to be taken from a book / interview (unfortunately I cannot find the definitive origin of the quote in John Stott's writings, so I don't know the date):

  “I’ve learnt very early on that Christianity is not a religion and it is not an institution, it is a person. It was enormously helpful for me to discover that Christianity is Christ and and that what matters is a personal relationship to Christ.

  So the verses which came to mean much to me were Philippians 3 verses 8,9, where the Apostle Paul says, “That what was gain to me I counted loss for Christ. Indeed I have counted all things but loss in comparison with the overwhelming gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I’ve suffered the loss of all things (Paul went on) and count them as refuse or rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness based on Law, but the righteous that comes from God through faith in Christ.”

  It’s all Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. Knowing Him, loving Him, serving Him, trusting Him, gaining Him. ‘To me to live is Christ’, Paul said, and I think, I hope without boasting I can say the same, it is a Person.”

But I did find this quote from his 1992 book The Contemporary Christian, recipient of Christianity Today 1994 Critics Choice Award.  The book was recently (June 2019) republished by IVP in 5 smaller books, the first being The Gospel - A Life-changing Message, and I found what looks like a publisher excerpt here.  As you can see, IVP even prominently started the summary of the book as follows:

  What is the authentic gospel? How do we answer the sceptics?

  Christianity is not a religion, but God's good news for the world. This implies that it has both a divine origin and a human relevance: it comes from God and it speaks to our condition.

Here's the first paragraph of the book's introduction to the first part (The Gospel), which was already present back in 1992:

  Christianity is not a religion, let alone one religion among many. It
  is God’s good news for the world. The Christian gospel has both a
  divine origin (it comes from God) and a human relevance (it speaks
  to our condition). So, before we ask the question, ‘What is the gospel?’,
  we must explore the logically prior question, ‘What is a human
  being?’

  ...

Conclusion: dichotomy origin as an effect of the evangelistic ethos

Now that we have identified several prominent personalities influencing the community which promoted a particular meaning of "religion", the next step is to inquire the motivation of that change, since ultimately language is a human product.  From the survey of usage it does not look like it is a temporary change; the change seems to be gaining force toward permanence, at least within certain Christian groups.  The Wikipedia article on semantic change includes a list of types as well as motivations of semantic change.  In the article, Dr. Rauser pegged the type of change as metonymy.  How about motivation?  Below is my personal argument that the motivation is the fervent desire to spread the gospel, which resulted in a semantic change to better fit the group's ethos.

Regardless of the terms used to describe Christianity, it is a unique "religion" which breaks a lot of attempts to categorize it.  It is also an intensely proselytizing "religion" because Jesus, the founder, was Himself providing the imperative to bring God's good news (the new covenant) to the end of the world in order to gather all sheep into his Kingdom at the end of time.  Who can beat God when He Himself sets His will to call us to Him?

All the persons quoted in the articles and books above were "on fire" from within to communicate this good news, and have to face a multitude of challenges from a variety of audiences who have "prejudiced" themselves against this good news by trying to put the Good News in a box, a category that will make this Good News "safe", that will put them "in control" by barricading themselves in a comfort zone of their own making.  Thus an academic makes his/her own notion of religion using high-sounding scholarly language to recast the good news as a respectable "systematic theology" that he/she can attend to whenever comfortable, at the cost of a real encounter with God.  A non-intellectually inclined person falsely thinks of God as a being to be "appeased" by prayer & fasting & sacraments done mostly in a behavioral / ritualistic manner, also at the cost of a real encounter with God.  In both cases, the Good News would not have produced the effects that the real God intended within the person.

But God's way to save a person (through the Holy Spirit) is to initiate the action from above, literally pursuing the target like a hunter, and demolish any categories that become an idol / barrier to the full effect of the good news, which includes the full personal revelation of God's being to a potential convert's heart.  It is sometimes necessary for the Holy Spirit to reconfigure this person's mind and ideas so this full personal revelation can touch the person's heart.  It is then no wonder that many committed Christians including heavy-weights like Karl Barth, Billy Graham, and John Stott felt free as ambassadors of God to adjust the long-standing dictionary definitions of "religion" when they feel that the definitions are obstructing the force of God's redemptive actions in human hearts & minds.

In the final analysis, it's not that the older definition of "religion" is bad or wrong; it's clear that dichotomy wouldn't work without a re-definition of "religion".  The dichotomy also doesn't imply that theology, sacraments, and activities are in themselves bad; the dichotomy is a rhetorical device to put those things in perspective so the "relationship" aspect which implies Christ and the God-initiated Good News can truly shine.

In my experience it is correlated to the rise in Protestant rent-a-building cult following communities (i.e. where people go for the charisma of the preacher and the emotional response from the rock band) and 'megachurches' marketing themselves to be in contrast with 'mainline denominations' (i.e. Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian) from 1980's - 2000's, finally cemented in American imagination and propelled to popularity by this foolish YouTube video (which has been rebutted multiple times).


How does one reconcile the changelessness of God with Jesus' incarnation? The Bible says that God "remains the same" (Ps 102:27), and that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb 13:8). This seems to mean that he is changeless.

However, Jesus was not always human. For eternity, he had only a divine nature, up till his physical incarnation, when he gained a human nature as well. He changed from being fully God to being both fully God and fully man (unless one believes that Jesus always had a human nature, even before humans were created).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for eternity prior to his incarnation, Jesus had no physical body, and then he gained one.

This sounds like a profound change to me.

How is this reconciled with his immutability?

This might be a hard one for us temporal creatures to get our head around, and it actually isn't just the incarnation that poses this problem. Viewed from a temporal perspective, we could just as well say: "Before creation, God wasn't a creator - after creation, he became one. How can this be consistent with the idea of God's immutability?"

The only logical solution to such dilemmas consistent with scripture that I am aware of is that God transcends time itself (ie God's eternity is timeless not everlasting time). From God's perspective in the eternal now, He has always been an incarnated God-man and will always be one. Change (not just in this matter, but in any respect) is something that only occurs within the temporal universe above which, God is transcendent:

  Concepts of eternity have developed in a way that is, as a matter of fact, closely connected to the development of the concept of God in Western thought, beginning with ancient Greek philosophers; particularly to the idea of God's relation to time, the idea of divine perfection, and the Creator-creature distinction. Eternity as timelessness, and eternity as everlastingness, have been distinguished. Following the work of Boethius and Augustine of Hippo divine timelessness became the dominant view. - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [emphasis added]

This answer to this question is one of the things that sets the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian denominations. We believe in the Godhead, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as three distinct separate beings.

In the beginning as we know it, God the Father had an exalted physical form, but all his children were spirits, Christ being one of his spirit children. When the plan of salvation was presented, Christ was selected to serve as saviour and redeemer of all God's children, and with god's power, created "the Heavens and the Earth" so that all those who were righteous in keeping their first estate (choosing to follow Christ's plan) in the pre-earth realm could come to earth and receive bodies.

Christ remained a Spirit and was known by the name Jehovah until the meridian of time, when he too was born on earth into a physical body. After his ministry, he died and was resurrected as a glorified exalted being, as the Father is. When we die, we too will be resurrected, every man that lives on the earth, but it is only by righteousness and obedience to God's laws that we too can be exalted and inherit a portion of our father's kingdom.


What should a priest who commits a mortal sin just before Holy Mass do, if confession is not available? Imagine following situation. There is a parish in a small village. There is only one priest in that parish (let's call him Fr. Nomen Nescio). It is Easter Sunday (or some important day on which laity expect mass and surely many of the faithful will come to the mass). Mass that will be celebrated on that day is the only one in that village and it will be celebrated in the evening (say 7:30 pm or 8:00 pm). Fr. N.N. prepares for the mass, there is 15 more minutes till mass begins and Church is already almost full. Now, God forbid this awful and monstrous situation; Fr. N.N. commits mortal sin just 5 minutes before mass. He is only priest in that parish (there is no other priest where he could go to confession). Because he is in a small village, the closest priest which could confess him is at least 1 hour of driving away. He  is very sorry for his sin that he just committed, however, he has only imperfect contrition; he is unable to move himself to perfect contrition.

What should Fr. N.N. do in that situation?

If he goes to celebrate mass then he is obliged to partake of Body and Blood of Christ, which would for Fr. N.N. be one of the worst mortal sins.

On the other hand, if he does not go to celebrate mass then there is a great evil, every faithful in that village will not get to go on mass on Easter Sunday and everyone already came to mass. If he does not go to celebrate mass, faithful will expect some good reason from Fr. N.N. why there will be no mass.

What course of action should Fr. N.N. take?

I am not sure (that is why I am asking this question) what should Fr. N.N. do, however it seems to me that there is no situation in which one should commit mortal sin; therefore it seems to me that Fr. N.N. should not celebrate mass.

Has the Church foreseen such awful situations and when these situations occur, is the priest somehow not obliged to partake of Body and Blood of Christ during Mass?

What should a priest who commits a mortal sin just before Holy Mass do, if confession is not available?

The priest in question must make a perfect act of contrition as best he can and must go to confession as soon as possible. He may under some circumstances still say Mass. The Church has very clear guidelines on this subject:

  When receiving or celebrating the sacraments, the priest is subject to the same requirements of sanctity and state of grace as every other Catholic; that is, the state of grace is required for fruitful reception of all sacraments except those that actually forgive sins.

  Therefore a priest who is in a state of mortal sin should seek to confess as soon as possible and refrain from celebrating the sacraments until he has done so.

  Normally, to celebrate Mass or receive Communion while in a state of mortal sin would be to commit a sacrilege. Yet, the sacrament would be valid; that is, there would be a true consecration and a true sacrifice.

  The reason is: Christ is the principal actor of the sacraments, so they are efficacious even when performed by an unworthy minister. As St. Thomas Aquinas says: Christ may act even through a minister who is spiritually dead.

  However, a priest who has fallen into mortal sin, but who is unable to make his confession despite his desire to do so, may celebrate Mass for the benefit of the faithful without adding a further sin of sacrilege.

  Thus, as Canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law states: "A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible (see also Canon 1335)."

  Note that the code requires a grave reason in order to avail of this exception.

  One such grave reason is based on the principle of the good of souls. If a priest is required to celebrate Mass or a soul requests the sacrament of reconciliation, the anointing of the sick, or indeed any other sacrament from this priest that would have to be performed before he can avail of confession, then he may, and usually must, administer the sacrament.

  A second grave reason stems from the danger of infamy by publicly revealing the state of one's soul.

  This can occur in the case of a priest in isolated circumstances when there is no one else to perform the usual celebrations. There is no need for him to do anything that might lead people to suspect his lack of a state of grace.

  Even in the case that the priest, or any other person, has secretly committed a grave crime, which would normally lead to his or her being automatically forbidden to receive the sacraments, Church law (Canon 1352) foresees the possibility of the penalty being suspended to avoid infamy or scandal, to wit:

  "§1. If a penalty prohibits the reception of the sacraments or sacramentals, the prohibition is suspended as long as the offender is in danger of death.

  "§2. The obligation to observe an undeclared 'latae sententiae' penalty which is not notorious in the place where the offender is present, is suspended totally or partially whenever the offender cannot observe it without danger of grave scandal or infamy."

  While the possibilities of a layperson or a religious in a state of mortal sin being placed in a similar dilemma as the priest are far rarer, the same basic principles would apply should they occur.

  Furthermore, while it is nobody else's business why somebody does not approach Communion, pastors should do all that they can to avoid creating public pressures that might induce a person in a state of mortal sin — or otherwise unable to receive Communion — to receive out of an objective fear of infamy or even out of human respect.

  For example, when parish ushers move down the aisles during Communion to assure an orderly procession, it becomes very difficult for someone, especially if well known to the other parishioners and who for some hidden reason cannot receive Communion, not to go forward with the others because staying in the pew is often the equivalent of making a public self-denunciation.

  In such cases, a less organized procession at Communion allows such people to pass unnoticed. - When a Priest Is in Mortal Sin

As a side note: I have known of cases in the Extraordinary Rite of the Mass (as we now call it) where a priest had forgotten to fast in the morning before Mass and did not say Mass that day because the fast was not observed.

What should a priest who commits a mortal sin just before Holy Mass do, if confession is not available?

  Canon Law
  "A person who is conscious of grave sin (mortal sin) is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible." [61](Code of Canon Law, canon 916 Archived June 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine)

There are three conditions in order for a person even a Priest to commit mortal sin.

  Three conditions are necessary for mortal sin to exist:

  Grave Matter: The act itself is intrinsically evil and immoral.
  Full Knowledge: The person must know that what they're doing or planning to do is evil and immoral.
  Deliberate Consent: The person must freely choose to commit the act or plan to do it.

  Mortal and Venial Sins in the Catholic Church

Example situation in which the priest fall into;

Fr. N.N. commits mortal sin just 5 minutes before mass. He is only priest in that parish (there is no other priest where he could go to confession). Because he is in a small village, the closest priest which could confess him is at least 1 hour of driving away. He is very sorry for his sin that he just committed, however, he has only imperfect contrition; he is unable to move himself to perfect contrition.

Question #1

What should Fr. N.N. do in that situation?
If he goes to celebrate mass then he is obliged to partake of Body and Blood of Christ, which would for Fr. N.N. be one of the worst mortal sins.

On the other hand, if he does not go to celebrate mass then there is a great evil, every faithful in that village will not get to go on mass on Easter Sunday and everyone already came to mass. If he does not go to celebrate mass, faithful will expect some good reason from Fr. N.N. why there will be no mass.

The priest in your narration had already admitted his fault and attempted to seek the pardon of God, only then he was not able to reach a state of perfect contrition.

If the fallen priest continue to celebrate the Holy Mass taking into consideration the people who are already present to celebrate the Holy Mass and also knowing that there's no time for him to seek the help of another priest, then by the definition of the three elements of mortal sins the fallen priest does not satisfies the conditions of committing mortal sin. Therefore your assumptions of the situation is in error, it is not a mortal sin anymore in the part of the fallen priest.

Now, let's take a look on the issue of the sacrilege, the question assumed that the priest was unable to reach the perfect state of contrition. In this scenario only God can judge the action of the priest as no man has the faculties to see the heart of a man.It's not for us to make a judgement that he committed a sacrilege eventhough the Church clearly defined that those who partake the Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin committed a sacrilege but the issue was negated by the fact that the fallen priest does not deliberately intend to partake but was only forced by the urgency of the situation.

Question #2

What course of action should Fr. N.N. take?

I am not sure (that is why I am asking this question) what should Fr. N.N. do, however it seems to me that there is no situation in which one should commit mortal sin; therefore it seems to me that Fr. N.N. should not celebrate mass.

What course of action should the fallen priest do? Asking for forgiveness and seeking the mercy of God is the first step as you narrated was already initiated by the fallen priest. So, the first step was good. The next step since the fallen priest already acknowledged his fault then he should expect the merciful graces of God to come as it is the Will of God primarily for Him to fulfill his obligation or priestly vows. Our  loving and merciful God does not count how many times we fall but encourage all of us to rise up by seeking His merciful graces.

Question #3

Has the Church foreseen such awful situations and when these situations occur, is the priest somehow not obliged to partake of Body and Blood of Christ during Mass?

The answer is absolutely yes, that's why the Church thru the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit had instituted the Canon Law that oversee the governance and discipline of the Catholic Church Ministers of the Holy Eucharist not just for the Clergy but also the issues towards the lay faithfuls.

  Code of Canon Law
  THE MINISTER OF THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST

Other consideration; you described the situation as awful but let us not forget that your described situation is very light compare to actual situations that happened in the Catholic Church. What do I mean, God Permissive Will allowed ordained priest to celebrate the Holy Mass that was identified as belonging to the Communist group that infiltrated the Church as testified by Bella Dodd. This ordained priest has no vocation nor God's calling to serve the priesthood but God allows them to infiltrate the Church and celebrated Holy Mass eventhough the heart of this ordained priest was corrupted by the malice of Satan.

  Full text of "Investigation of Communist activities in the Columbus, Ohio, area. Hearings"

Also, one good example that God allows the celebration of the Holy Mass even if a priest celebrant is sinful or perhaps not in the state of grace is the personal testimony of Fr.Steven Scheier. For twelve years, as Fr.Scheier testified that he was not a good priest and as you said it is a sacrilege on the part of the priest to partake the Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. So, the testimony affirmed that Jesus judgment for him is eternal damnation. But there's a beautiful story behind the beautiful life of Fr.Scheier as he rise up from his lukewarm or sinful ways as a Priest.

  The Illumination
  It did not take long before everything seemed to come back to me. The following seemed to happen immediately after the accident. I was before the Throne of Judgment! Jesus Christ was the Judge. I didn’t see Him, I merely heard Him. What took place was instantaneous as far as “our time” is concerned. He went through my entire life on earth and accused me of sins of commission and omission that were unconfessed and therefore unforgiven and unrepented sins. To each offense, I said, “Yes, Lord!” I had planned that when this would happen I would have all kinds of excuses to say to the Lord. For example, “Well, Lord, you know, she was a pretty feisty woman, and one lost his patience very easily with her all the time!” Well, when you are talking to Truth personified, you don’t have any excuses; so all you say is “Yes, Lord!”

  Mother – He’s Yours
  He reached the end of my judgement and said to me, “Your sentence is hell!” Again, I said, “Yes Lord,
  I know!” It was the only logical conclusion that He could have come up with. It was not a shock to my system! It was as if He were honoring my choice, my decision. I had chosen my sentence; He was merely honoring my choice. It was then, after He had said this that I heard a woman’s voice, “Son, would You spare his life and his immortal soul?” The Lord said, “Mother, he has been a priest twelve years not for himself and not for me; let him reap the punishment he deserves!” She, in reply said, “But Son, what if we give to him special graces and strengths and then see if he bears fruit. If not, Your will be done!” There was a very short pause and then I heard Him say, “Mother, he’s yours!” And I have been hers both naturally and supernaturally now for the past twelve years. I don’t believe that I could have been without her for the length of time that she was absent from my life and my spirituality.

  God’s Merciful Judgement: A Priest’s True Story
  by FR. STEVEN SCHEIER | DECEMBER 17, 2015