Identity of the Messiah from ‘The Oldest Midrash,’ by Dr. John David Pitcher, Jr, MD

Section from Holman Hunt's painting, "The Light of the World"

Dr. Pitcher

By John David Pitcher Jr. I remember as a boy learning how to set the dinner table. On holidays, I got to help set the china and the silverware. Family would come over and we would dine together. Of course there was an adult table and a children’s table. There is an uncommon Greek word transliterated depnasow meaning “I dine” that has four uses in the New Testament and only one use in the 70 Rabbis’ translation of the Hebrew Scripture, the Septuagint, from which the contextual meaning of the word comes. But first we should consider the New Testament uses before placing the word’s contextual meaning to the uses in those verses. All the four uses in the New Testament are from well-known areas of Scripture. Perhaps the most well-known use of the word “dine” is in Revelation 3:20 in the Messiah’s letter to the lukewarm church of Laodicea bringing to mind William Holman Hunt’s painting “The Light of the World” seen bel…