Toto

Young's Literal:

Joel 1: 5 Awake, ye drunkards, and weep, And howl all drinking wine, because of the juice, For it hath been cut off from your mouth.

6 For a nation hath come up on my land, Strong, and there is no number, Its teeth [are] the teeth of a lion, And it hath the jaw-teeth of a lioness.

7 It hath made my vine become a desolation, And my fig-tree become a chip, It hath made it thoroughly bare, and hath cast down, Made white have been its branches.

The NIV has

7 It has laid waste my vines
and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
and thrown it away,
leaving their branches white.

I'm not sure where this leads. In Hosea 9, the fig tree is not harmed. In Joel 1, it is destroyed.

Malachi151

Now we are getting somewhere, so there is a scriptural tie into this after all.

The Hosea 9 reading makes all the more sense since this follows the throwing of the merchants out of the temple. Indeed I would have to say that I think Hosea 9 needs to be added to the list of references for the Temple scene.

Thanks

Gamera

Jesus (or the gospel authors) seems to make a number of references to Hosea, a book he was apparently particularly fond of, so it shouldn't surprise us if the fig blasting incident refers to Hosea's symbology.

Gamera

Billy Joel himself fell into goddess worship -- when he married Cindy.

No Robots

Er, it was Christie. Gotta keep yer goddesses straight there, dude.

Gamera

Oh, I got my Brinkleys and Crawford goddess mixed up. No goddess worshipper I.

furcifer

Basically Jesus was being a baby. What did he expect "It was not the season" for figs

Clivedurdle

Welcome!

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=207079

Solo

I don't think he was a baby though he was experiencing cognitive patterns in which infantile regressions frequently occur (see M.A.Persinger's description of the TLTs effects). People whose sleep is dysregulated due to temporal lobe challenges will experience hypnagogic states, sometimes frank hallucinations. In excited manics, the appearance of food often coincides with the desire for it, so the provision of food seems magical.
It works something like this: one has a desire for an apple, and voila, an apple appears on the table. By "jamais-vu" magic. In physiological terms, the apple was perceived but not cognitively registered until a desire for it is created. During the abating phases, the subject's brain will be often "fooling" its holder by creating the hunger reflex during the hypnagogic states but without food. Very common challenge in manics and one that was evidently alluded to in the original fig-tree tale. The mental error was read as devil's trickery by Jesus, and he cursed the tree.
Interesting to see Matthew to remove the "out of season" reference but adding that the incident happened in the morning, (i.e. when hypnagogia happens most frequently), which I think shows he understood the nature of Mark's story. Luke evidently considered it a dead giveaway and too embarassing to a stoic Jesus.

Jiri

DramaQ

But for that metaphor the miracle would have been more like: the tree bore fruit out of season. In other words, if Jesus had said, “I’m hungry” and they came back and found the tree full of figs, that would have displayed meaningful faith in the absence of it.

It seems to me the text is saying that the power of faith permits the user to perform supernatural acts. Like withering trees with a word, or commanding mountains to jump into the sea.

It’s like Yoda telling Luke how to get his ship out of the swamp.

The other problem with the tree (itself) being a symbol of the faithless is the out-of-season thing. I still don’t get what is meant here.

dq