🌲Pine Frost🌲 (@PineFrost)

I want to address 1 Timothy 4. [1 Timothy 4:1-5] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. First of all, vegetarians and, especially vegans, do not have a “seared conscience with a hot iron” given their compassion for animals, neither do any of them preach against marriage. Secondly, ‘foods’ in verse 3 (βρωμάτων, G1033) is rendered ‘meats’ in the KJV, a mistake which is repeated by the other versions, like the ASV, the ERV, Darby, and the Catholic Bible (i.e. the most subversive of the English translations, minus the NIV) as ‘meat,’ when it should be translated as ‘food’. In the Authorized Version of the Bible (the KJV), “meat” had a broader meaning of “food” (actually spelled ‘meate’ in the 1611 KJV), and the word is never used to refer to any kind of flesh, otherwise it would mention *flesh* (Greek: *kréa*, G2907) The inference is made only due to cultural norms and laziness in word associations. Any KJO-Christian who insists on applying the modern understanding of speech to an archaic text of Scripture shouldn’t call himself a Christian, as he distorts the scriptures to his own destruction. Nowhere does Scripture state that God created animals *as foods*, especially to be received with thanksgiving, as "dominion" implies *stewardship*, but doesn't place us on top of "the food chain" (which doesn't exist). If this was the case, it would have explicitly stated so in the account of the Garden of Eden, which actually states the opposite, that God gave the first man “every fruit bearing tree as food” (Genesis 1:29). Meat is the product of when God’s creatures are desecrated and butchered. Unless we assume Paul contradicted himself by declaring his vegetarianism in 1 Corinthians 8:13 only to endorse meat here, we must see this passage as addressing two vegetarian groups: *lacto-ovo* vegetarians and *strict vegans*. Paul resolves a dispute between Christians and those only influenced by Essene traditions, but not believers, as he notes, “of them which believe and know the truth.” His stance is clear: no compromise on God’s truth! When Paul declares that permissible foods are “consecrated by the word of God and prayer,” he affirms that these foods comply with both sacred Essene traditions and the teachings of Scripture. Far from opening the door to meat consumption, Paul upholds the established vegetarian way of life! He was not writing new rules for the Christians, but reinforcing time-honored customs. The “hypocrites” are those peddling “destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1) by daring to condemn foods God Himself sanctioned in the Garden of Eden. Can we not see the glaring irony? This accusation points squarely at Christians who follow low-carb diets, or any other diet that is not part of God’s original design. The Essenes, who were the first Christians, were not opposed to marriage. They were only opposed to *lasciviousness* and *sexual passions*. Josephus wrote that they “do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage, and the succession of mankind thereby continued; but they guard against the lascivious behavior of women” because women, at that time, were seen as having characteristics of “quarrels, jealousies, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions” and “envy” as Paul lists in Galatians 5:19-21, as the Essenes were so focused on maintaining their strict lifestyle of holiness and obedience, and did not want such influences to cause strife and drama in their community. This is why Paul forbade women from speaking in the assembly and from teaching men. This is not to say that only women have these characteristics, but these characteristics are more common in women than in men. Men who behaved in such ways were seen as being “effeminate”. The Essenes were a communal sect, but not all of them were commune-dwellers. There were some who lived outside of the sect and lived with their families. These only had sex for the strict purpose of procreation and posterity, but not for pleasure. This is why Paul wrote that celibacy was good for those who could handle it, but those who could not handle it should marry due to emotional dependency, or to avoid guilt if one believed he was abandoning his girlfriend. But even the propagation of the sect was no concern because of Yahshua’s words, “in the resurrection, men do not marry and women are not given in marriage,” (Matthew 22:30) and Paul believed the Kingdom of Heaven was going to be established in his time. Josephus wrote that the Essenes were vegetarians in *Antiquities* (15.10.4), describing them as ‘Pythagoreans’, which was synonymous with ‘vegetarian’ in the ancient world, and the Community Rule scroll (1QS) states that they abstained from eating “the flesh of holocausts”, meaning sacrifices. ‘Essene’ is a Greek variation of ‘Nazarene’, a sect which Yahshua belonged to, dating back to Zadok, in whom the priesthoods of Melchizedek and Aaron were merged. This is why Yahshua is called the high priest of the Order of Melchizedek in the letter to the Hebrews. ‘Nazareth’ was actually a sect label to describe any community of the Nazarites, but it was not a place name. Both the Nazarenes/Essenes and the Pythagoreans taught non-violence and forbade all slaughter, and it’s safe to assume that Yahshua himself was a vegetarian, despite our modern English Gospels say he ate fish and fed it to others, which were translated from Latin and Greek gospels that were tampered with by the early Church, who never had _*any*_ authority to interpret Scripture, much less translate it, as the church fathers were all false teachers. Many associate Biblical vegetarianism with ancient Gnostic sects, which is based on ignorance of both the Gnostic and the Essene/Christian beliefs and practices. The Gnostics were a particular group which both shunned marriage, but celebrated the Eucharist, as the Gnostics prohibited the practice of sex and procreation due to their belief that the world and its Creator is evil, and even mandated the initiates who were married to divorce their wives in order to join their sect. It is erroneous to just assume that anyone who advocates just one out of the many “heresies” in 1 Timothy 4 is a “damnable heretic”. Paul is describing a particular group that practiced all of them simultaneously, namely the Zealots. In the passage, he calls them “hypocrites”, or “hypocritical liars” in the NIV, which means ‘actors’ in Greek, the same word used by Yahshua against the Pharisees (out of whom the Zealots sprung). The Zealots had the “appearance of godliness” as they too practiced vegetarianism, but was the only thing they had right. They were violent radicals, and sought the restoration of the Temple and its sacrifices. This is why Paul called them “hypocrites”. It was not their diet he was condemning, but their *hypocrisy*. It is easy to get the Essenes mixed up with the other sects that existed in the apostolic era due to the discovery of the scrolls found in the Qumran caves. Many assume that all the scrolls were written and practiced by just one sect, but the caves were just the site where the scrolls were placed and hidden away, not the location of the Essene sect. Some of them were written by the Essenes, such as the *Community Rule*, some were written by the Zealots, like the *War scroll*, and some of them were Gnostic writings. Even writers like Josephus and Philo had these sects mixed up, as anyone who did not live in Judea at the time had no knowledge of the divisions of sects, and slapped a collective label on all them. #1Timothy4 #Bible #vegan #gnostic #essene #Josephus #zealots