Membranes and parchments

The noun μεμβρανα (membrana) means skin and refers to parchment: a thin sheet to write on, made from animal skin. The first animal skins had been provided by YHWH (Genesis 3:21), in order to cover man's nakedness (עירם, 'erom), which man first had attempted to cover with plant materials (Genesis 3:7), specifically sewn fig leaves — and the word for fig, namely תאנה (te'enah), is identical to a noun meaning opportunity. This is certainly not where the puns stop: see for more our articles on the name Bethany, meaning House of Figs, and the Greek noun συκον (sukon), meaning fig. See our article on the name Adam for a closer look at what the creation story might actually be about.

Our noun μεμβρανα (membrana) occurs in the New Testament in 2 Timothy 4:13 only, in the highly allegorical (or otherwise rather inexplicable) request by Paul to Timothy to pick up the cloak he left with Carpus at Troas, and bring it along with his papers and parchments. Timothy was probably still in Ephesus at the time, were he was to "instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines" (1 Timothy 1:3). Troas was located 250 kilometer — 155 miles, or about 10 day journeys — to the north of Ephesus, while Timothy's transport to Rome would have gone in the opposite direction toward the southern coast of the Peloponnese. That is, unless he took the overland route by the Via Egnatia, which would have been considerably slower, more expensive and probably more dangerous. All this would have been at clear odds with Paul's request to "make every effort to come to me soon" (2 Timothy 4:9).

This means that Paul's request for Timothy to swing by Carpus for his favorite cloak and books, so that Timothy could laboriously transport these all the way to Rome, the fashion and literature capital of the world, invites all but the most inattentive reader to look a little further.

Beyond cloaks and books

To start with: the term "Carpus of Troas" literally means "the Fruit of Troy," which in our present narrative climate immediately reminds of the Fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, also because the aforementioned word for nakedness, namely עירם ('erom), closely relates to the word for "cunning", namely ערום ('arum), as in "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field" (Genesis 3:1), with "the field" at once reminding of the "shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2:8).

Our English words "textile", "text" and "technology" and even the Greek word for Jesus' earthly profession, namely τεκτων (tekton), meaning "assembler" (and not "carpenter"), all derive from the same PIE root "teks-", to weave, which implies that any reference to any sort of clothing or woven fabric (even Moses' wicker basket among the Egyptian "papyri", and Paul's cargo basket, σπειρα, speira, with which he escaped Damascus) is a tongue-in-cheek reference to writing systems or particularly celebrated pieces of text (Jesus' seamless garment obviously refers to something in Hebrew; also see Isaiah 6:1).

Our noun μεμβρανα (membrana) is a Latin word, and Paul's use of it is a big deal because this word was not at all common in Greek. The Greek language had its own word for parchment, namely περγαμηνη (pergamene), which was named after the city Pergamum, a city just south of Troy, in the very same way in which βιβλος (biblos), paper, was named after the Phoenician city Byblos (a.k.a. Gebal). The name Pergamum in turn derives from the name Priam, who was the king of Troy during the famous siege.

The common Latin word for paper (what the Greeks called βιβλος, biblos) was named after loose strips of bark, called liber (hence our English word "library"), which may have reminded some people of the declaration "cursed who hangs from a tree" (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), which in turn condemned the entire Latin library, which culminated in Virgil's Aeneid, which told how the Roman royal elite derived from Troyan survivors, like a fruit from a Troyan branch.

All this means that by demonstrably using the Latin word "membrane", Paul made quite a statement.

Our noun μεμβρανα (membrana) comes from the adjectival suffix "-ana", which means "of" or "pertaining to", plus the familiar noun membrum, meaning member or limb. This word in turn appears to have derived from a Proto-Indo-European root "mems-", flesh or meat. Paul doesn't mention how many "skins" he wants Timothy to retrieve, but his wording seems to be designed to bring to mind the event at Gibeath-haaraloth, where Joshua circumcised Israel a second time (Joshua 5:2-3), or David's dowry for Michal (1 Samuel 18:25-27), even the sin of Simeon and Levi (Genesis 34:25, 49:5-7). Earlier, Paul had circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3), and the true nature of circumcision (whether this was physical or mental or both) and the need for it (whether only for Israelites or for gentiles too), remained a topic of concern all throughout the Pauline letters: see our article on περιτεμνω (peritemno), to circumcise.

Another bodily membrane of note is the φρην (phren), or midriff, with which one breathes and hence speaks and sings. The nouns "choir" and "charisma" have in common that they both express social felicity, and relate the important noun χαρις (charis), which doesn't simply mean "grace" (as it is often translated as) but rather collective joy: collectively generated and collectively enjoyed. It's this marvelous word that emphasizes the collective nature of salvation, which (contrary to modern propaganda) is not a private and personal thing but rather something that is as social as language and culture. Hence: "By χαρις (charis) you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:4-9), and "Where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst" (Matthew 18:20).

The Greek word for living flesh is σαρξ (sarx). The Hebrew equivalent is בשר (basar), from the verb בשר (basar), to bring glad tidings: tidings of comfort and joy.

Fishers of men

It appears that Paul's wordplay also involved a look-alike word, which, unlike our Latin word μεμβρανα (membrana), was quite common in Greek, namely the noun μεμβρας (membras), which described a kind of small fish (a sprat or anchovy). The origin of this second word is also unknown, but it existed in several variants (βεμβρας, bembras; βεβραδα (bebrada); βαμβραδων, bambradon), which to us here at Abarim Publication suggests that the source of this second word may have been Semitic (see our article on the many Hebrew roots of Greek). The word we're thinking of is the adjective בריא (bari'), fat, plump or plentiful, from the verb ברא (bara' II), to be healthy and free. The identical verb ברא (bara' I) means to create, so that our little fish could also simply be known as "critter" or "among the creatures". Also of interest: noun ברית (berit) means covenant.

And now that we're on the topic: the first two words of the Bible are בראשית ברא (bresheet bera), which means "in the beginning created" but which also looks like a case of broken symmetry: ברא־שית ברא (bera-syt bera), with the verb שית (shyt) meaning to set or place firmly, and note that the familiar noun θεος (theos), god, probably comes from the noun θετης (thetes), setter, from the verb τιθημι (tithemi), to set or place. The quintessential manifestation of broken symmetry is of course the second creation day, during which the uniform waters of the first day are split by the heavenly firmament into (1) waters above the firmament, which never again return into the narrative focus, and (2) the waters below the heavenly firmament, out of which fruitful dry land emerges and upon which the heavenly lights cast their light from their place in the heavenly firmament. This image of broken symmetry occurs all over the Bible — sometimes to illustrate how the dividing heavens relate to the divided waters, sometimes to meditate on what happens to the rejected segment and sometimes to examine what happens to the accepted and fruitful part. All this, of course, ultimately reflects the relationship between the husband's scrotum (the winning semen comes from only one testicle) and the bride's reproductive system (whose fertilized ovum, again, comes from only one ovary): the male part is described by the first two words, whereas the female part is described as the second creation day. Other Biblical examples range from "heavenly" Israel cutting through the waters of the Sea of Reeds, or king Solomon judging the two mothers, perhaps even the two stone tablets that Moses carried down from the mountain, but certainly Jesus hanging between the two murderers, one of whom rejects Christ, whereas the other binds himself eternally to him.

The Hebrews wrote on parchment but only on parchment that was made from kosher animals, which had been slaughtered by a kosher butcher. The Aramaic word for that is קלף (klap), which relates to the Hebrew verb גלב (galab), to shave, from which also comes the name Gilboa — and note that from the root שער (sa'ar) come words for hair, terror, the name Seir and the word for goat, whereas from the Greek word for goat, namely τραγος (tragos), comes our English word "tragedy". Since Jews see joy as their ideal (Deuteronomy 28:47, Jude 1:24), "Judaism is the principled rejection of tragedy" (in the spirited words of Rabbi Sacks). Note also that from the Greek word for hair, namely κομη (kome), comes the word κοσμος (kosmos), world-order.

Any skin that wasn't from a kosher animal or that wasn't produced in a kosher way, was called עור ('or), which is precisely where the aforementioned word for nakedness, namely עירם ('erom), comes from. The associated verb עור ('awar) means to be blind, in the sense that too much of anything (skin in this case) leads as much to deficiency as a lack of something. The other member of the proverbial duo "the lame and the blind" makes use of the verb פסח (pasah), to be lame or to lack something (strength, in this case). The poet Homer is traditionally counted among the blind — hence Jesus' complaint that the Pharisees were blind: they had allowed themselves to succumb to Hellenization (Matthew 23:16). Likewise, when Jesus was in the synagogue of Capernaum and read from the scroll of Isaiah, he recited the Septuagint's version that adds "and recovery of sight to the blind" (Luke 4:18, see Isaiah 61:1-2), again as an obvious jab at the Homeric tradition of the Greeks. (The men of Capernaum proceed to drive Jesus up the local hill, only the enact the plight of Sisyphus.)

Jesus embodies the Word of God, who came to mankind "dressed" in Hebrew (Genesis 15:1, see 14:13) and because Hebrew has qualities that no modern language has (it's seamless, to start with), the Hebrew Bible simply cannot be translated. And when it is translated anyway (Ezekiel 8:12), it turns the Living Word into a static idol, and the further away from Hebrew the target language is, the more frozen and ridiculous and pagan its "version" of the Bible becomes (see our article on εβδομηκοντα, hebdomekonta, seventy, and if your primary language is English, see our article on Mesopotamia).

The heartbeat of human cognition

Human cognitive evolution isn't gradual. It comes in pulses. And every time a pulse fires, the floodgates are opened and a long period of consolidation follows during which the population is divided into people who react responsibly and collectively with the new situation, and people who remain as selfish and competitive as any animal (Psalm 73:22, Ecclesiastes 3:18, 2 Peter 2:12, Jude 1:10). When very early humans lived very simple lives, only the great foundational stories were told or sang around campfires and expanded upon by creative members of the tribe, whose contributions were assessed by the natural demands of the collective. Whatever made sense to everyone was kept and became the tribe's depository of vocabulary and archetypes and themes. At that level, the tribe's foundational library was literally its language's nursery, where it grew without ever losing its internal consistency, and from where it supplied identity to every individual speaker.

The primary function of the ancient stories was to generate consciousness: from a pioneering awakened few, the natural visionaries, radially outward into society, like light from a central fire. The purpose of foundational stories is not to report on the truth of events that "really happened" but rather the truth of the invisible structures of human consciousness. Dictionaries and grammar books are recent inventions that did not exist in antiquity. What did exist were foundational texts (from Moses and the Prophets to Homer, the Quran and later even the King James Bible), and their purpose was to demonstrate the language that unified the people (Genesis 1:2). The God of whom the Bible speaks is One (Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 45:6-7), so that divinity is unity (Romans 8:28, Ephesians 4:1-6, John 17:21-23). The sacred texts are not sacred because some ruler or committee declared them so, but because the unity of God had entered man, and because of that, the texts emerged. Sacred texts are sacred because they reflect the unity of the whole of creation.

That said: the Hebrew language was not created or made or formed by man, but rather discovered. It's like a river that has many greater and smaller tributaries on one end and a vast fading delta on the other, but a solid life-bearing body in the middle. The way countless quantum particles shot at a recording screen collectively reflect the chances where any one might end up, or the way countless ants or bees forge a collective house that emerges from and reflects nothing beyond the very heart of each individual, even the way one's unified personality and physical form reflects one's most inner DNA that's distributed across one's trillions of cells, so the Hebrew language is something that sits at the very core of consciousness, and that emerged when many consciousnesses began to work together — first forming trickling tribes, then federations, and ultimately fading into the world's languages, but in the solid middle a mirror of any thought ever had by anyone anywhere. The Hebrew language is like the Periodic Table of Elements or the Standard Model of Elementary Particles, and no, this is nothing new as it has been contemplated for at least 2000 years (see, for instance, the Sefer Yetzirah, which declares that God first created Hebrew, and only then manifested the physical forms of each of the Hebrew words by pronouncing them).

But then the cognitive revolution happened and tribes began to exchange information and local languages began to coalesce and all little libraries met like tributaries until one great river formed and began to water the whole basin from one unified source. But when that happened, it was no longer possible to guard what went into the river, and the river slowly began to fill up with anybody's garbage and excrement (Leviticus 10:1).

The exact same thing happened when foundational texts began to be so large that recordkeepers began to experiment with mnemonic aids, which waxed into early systems of notation. Early texts were rightly considered magic or divine extensions of the human mind, and the only people allowed to handle the tribe's sacred records were specially trained priests, who were members of priestly families. That changed when the Phoenicians introduced the alphabet to the world and any Tom, Dick and Harry could learn to read and write and produce texts (Exodus 19:6), and sacred texts — that were sacred not by anybody's decree but because they had been sifted and sieved over centuries by everybody in the perfect Republic of the Open Market — were overwhelmed by the sudden increase of textual liquidity: a deluge of secular fantasies, propaganda and nonsense. On rare occasions, a priest-level wunderkind was born among the non-priests, and was subsequently adopted into the priestly clan (Exodus 2:5-6, 1 Samuel 1:24, Luke 2:49), but mostly, the world drowned. People who could not tell the difference between the sacred and the profane (Jonah 4:11, Matthew 6:3; see our article on why left is bad and right is good), went with anything new and exciting (Acts 17:21). But people who could tell the difference, cherished the sacred texts and kept them "dry" while the world around them turned into a soggy swamp.

And a river burst forth

The exact same thing happened when the printing press was invented. Up to then, it had been up to the wealthy elite to decide which books were preserved and which ones were left to fade away. And since, as if by miracle, there tends to be a considerable overlap between wealthy people and wise ones, the library of man was largely organized according to the insights of the people who ran human society. When the printing press was invented, it became much easier for anybody to publish their opinions, but only a very few had insights that matched the records of the sacred Republic. These triggered the scientific revolution. But most publications didn't match anything, and these turned the world into an intellectual swamp that became the home of every vile and slithering thing from secularism to communism and fascism.

The exact same thing happened with the Industrial Revolution, when unlettered masses flooded into the cities, learned how to read and believed the first book they came across. That resulted in the age of spiritism, romanticism (and Evangelicalism, by the way) and quickly nationalism, then fascism and the Holocaust. Then came the Internet which placed more information in the hands of toddlers than doctors had at their disposal during the Renaissance. Prior to the Internet, only manuscripts that made it past a cohort of editors and reviewers (and marketeers) were published and exposed to the wider audience. The Internet bypassed that filter, so that now anybody could publish, connect and amass a following. That admittedly resulted in the rescue of many a genius born north of the proverbial wall, but mostly it yielded ever more cat photos and conspiracy theories. And it polarized the world more than any religion or school of thought or military leader had ever dreamed could be possible.

The ancients knew that the key to a sound mind is the unity of all knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), which is more important than any fact, because it gives every fact context (Matthew 6:33). The unity of knowledge is like the Higgs field. Without it, facts have no "weight" and cannot be assessed or even incorporated into any useful world view.

The final stage in our little drama comes with the rise of AI. If we allow AI to teach our children before AI has come to understand the God of Unity, then our children will first lose their mind, then their humanity and finally their lives (see for further details our article on Apollyon). If we can somehow teach God to AI, then our children will flourish and find the mind that pervades all of creation, and ride it to reach the stars. If the perfect track record of history is anything to go by, then mankind will almost certainly split into two: a very small camp that clings to the unity that was last seen in the sacred ancient texts, and a very large camp that does not cling to that unity and subsequently turns into a raging tornado of dust that jealously barrels down upon the small camp, only to suddenly explode and be no more (Revelation 20:9).

Let the cloak and books come to me

We modern English speakers tend to intuit a proverbial contrast between water and fire, but to the Hebrew speakers these two phenomena were really quite the same: see this discussed in our article on the verb נהר (nahar), which both means to flow (what a river does) and to shine (what a lamp or star does). That means that from Noah's flood onward, mankind has been cultivated and pruned by several "floods" that were ever less watery and ever more fiery, with the difference being that water is natural and cannot be mastered, whereas fire (πυρ, pur) is technological and anything fire is doing to us, we are doing to ourselves.

Unlike Jesus, Paul did not embody the Hebrew Bible, and realized that all Indo-European languages are to varying degrees infused with Hebrew like water infuses the earth. The alphabet, by merit of which all Indo-European languages preserved their legacies (Psalm 16:10), was imported from the Semitic language basin, where it had emerged natively. The world eagerly adopted the Semitic alphabet, which came with a hefty bundle of Semitic terms that gave life and unity to the Indo-European languages (see our article on the many Hebrew roots of Greek).

Hebrew will always be the shepherd (ποιμεν, poimen) of mankind's languages, and thus mankind's consciousness. But the breath of life is not restricted to man, and rather extends throughout all God's living creatures (Genesis 1:30, 6:17, 7:15). This is why all text is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), and even anything written on a membrane or loose bark might still be redeemed (Romans 8:19-22).

Paul's original audience would surely have recognized his curious request to have his cloak and papers and parchments come to him as a literary device, by which he spoke of the formation of a much greater and wholly sanctified human library that is shepherded by the Hebrew Scriptures, who keep it clean and sheltered, well fed and free from predators. The same issue was expressed by Jesus when he requested the "children" to come to him (Matthew 19:14). And the same thing crossed Peter's mind when he had his vision of the great sheet with all the animals in it (Acts 10:13). This same formative principle made Solomon's court the center of the world, to which "every man brought his gift, articles of silver and gold, garments, weapons, spices, horses, and mules, so much year by year" (1 Kings 10:25). It's what the New Jerusalem is all about: "The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it" (Revelation 21:24). It was even said about Troy: "Numerous here are the allies spread out in Priam's great city, men from many lands, all speaking different tongues" (Il.2.803-804).

God formed Adam's body from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life, so that he became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). Then he made Abraham's seed like that same dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16, see Galatians 3:7). Again he gathered that dust of the earth, but now in Jerusalem, the home of devout men from every nation under heaven (Acts 2:5), and again he breathed into that gathering his spirit. And again it became a living soul.

The noun μερος (meros) means share, part or portion. It ultimately derives from a vast Proto-Indo-European root "(s)mer-", which is traditionally presented as having two separate branches:

• (s)mer- I, meaning to remember or care for, hence the Latin noun memoria and thus our English word "memory". Note that from the Hebrew verb for to remember, namely זכר (zakar), comes the adjective זכר (zakar), meaning male or "individual", since groups and societies were considered feminine;
• (s)mer- II, meaning to assign or allot, hence the Latin verb mereo, to deserve, and thus the English words "merit" and "emeritus".

It may be that these roots are not etymological related and only accidentally converged and became the same, but more probably is that to the ancients, the abstract idea of a person's memory has always seemed similar to a person's part of the larger human whole.

Our vastly complex human reality (our economy, our knowledge, our kaleidoscope of perspectives) and the language in which we describe and thus share these, depends on the principle of Theory of Mind. This in turn means that every single human mind is a node of a network, whose total unified scope and consistency vastly exceeds one single mind. It seems to us here at Abarim Publications that the ancients knew this, or at least that they knew this subconsciously, to which they aligned their preferences, and from which it was instilled in their language — see this discussed above in our article on μεμβρανα (membrana), parchment.

Our noun μερος (meros) means part: a portion of a larger whole (Luke 24:42, John 19:23, Acts 5:2). It's is often used to describe the "parts" of a larger area, as in our English expression "these parts", which doesn't necessarily actually describe a kind of division but refers to a district and its villages (Matthew 2:22, Acts 2:10) or a central city and its environs (Matthew 15:21, Mark 8:10). But it may also refer broadly to one's heritage, one's reputation or even portfolio of properties (Matthew 24:51, Luke 15:12), business share (Acts 19:27), or sphere of operation (John 13:8). Our word may refer to what we would call the side of a boat (John 21:6), or a sect within a larger religion (Acts 23:6-9).

Together with prepositions our noun may form expressions:

• with ανα (ana), on, upon or again, it conveys: in turn, successively (1 Corinthians 14:27);
• with παρα (para), near or nearby, it conveys: in turn, by turns;
• with κατα (kata), down (from, in, upon, etc.), it conveys: several(ly), in part;
• with απο (apo), from, it conveys: in specific part, in particular (Romans 11:25);
• with εν (en), meaning in, on, at or by, it conveys: in turn, in succession, by the side of;
• with εκ (ek), meaning out or from, it conveys: in particular (1 Corinthians 12:27) or in part (1 Corinthians 13:9);
• with προς (pros), which describes a motion toward, it conveys: in proportion.

Our noun occurs 43 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and from it derive:

The noun μηρος (meros) is commonly translated with "thigh" but that's euphemistic and ultimately incorrect. Instead, our word refers to the pelvic region, which in turn is centered upon the genitals. In Homer, our word describes where a soldier's mighty sword is hung: beside his meros (Il.1.190), even his sturdy meros (Od.11.231). Entirely in the same allegorical vein, our word appears in the Septuagint's version of Genesis 32:26, where Jacob wrestles the Angel of YHWH and the latter whacks the former on the "flat" (πλατυς, platus) of his μηρος (meros), so that Jacob the man becomes Israel the people.

A similar transition from individual (masculine) to collective (feminine) happens upon the resurrection of Christ and the outpour of the Holy Spirit into his Church. See our article on Stephen for a more detailed discussion of this, and see our above discussion of the noun μεμβρανα (membrana), membrane, for the link between (1) the making of the body of Adam from the dust of the earth, and (2) the beginning of the Body of Christ from the seed of Abraham, which was to be like the dust of the earth.

Among the many parallels between the Bible and Homer's Iliad (which tell of the same stories but from different perspective, through the eyes of alternating heroes, villains and victims) is the death of Achilles, the greatest of Greek heroes, whose death was later explained from his vulnerable heel, or the perceived deadly weakness caused by the presence of Jacob, the heel-guy, in Greek society. The story of how the Angel of YHWH made Israel by dislocating Jacob's μηρος (meros) is retold in the Iliad as the bout between Diomedes (i.e. Zeus + מדד, madad, to measure) and Aeneas — who would become the ancestor of the Roman elite, according to Virgil, and a paralytic of eight years (a play on the name Octavian), according to Luke (Acts 9:10). During this fight, as told by Homer, Diomedes shatters the μηρος (meros) of Aeneas (Il.5.305). Aeneas is subsequently rescued from his fatal injury by Aphrodite, and Diomedes, who had been fighting heavily wounded and with a severed tongue, was rescued by Athena, the protector of cities. The Hebrew word for city is עיר ('ir), which is closely related to the words we discuss above: עירם ('erom), naked, ערום ('arum), cunning, עור ('or), skin, and עור ('awar), to be blind.

The Hebrew account of the story of Jacob and the Angel features the word ירך (yarek), which is also commonly, euphemistically and incorrectly translated with "thigh". Instead, our word describes the innermost of a man's outer members, his physical heart so to speak — "So circumcise your heart, and be hard (קשה, qasha) no more" (Deuteronomy 10:16, also see Romans 2:29) — which is where his will is seated (John 1:13), and where he sealed his oaths (Genesis 24:2).

It's entirely unclear where our noun μηρος (meros) comes from, but despite the obvious similarity between it and the noun μερος (meros), which we discuss above, commentators generally propose a possible albeit not very obvious relationship with the same Proto-Indo-European root "mems-", flesh or meat, from which derives the noun μεμβρανα (membrana), from the familiar Latin word membrum, meaning "member" (see above).

The Greek equivalent of the Latin word membrum is μελος (melos), which is markedly similar to our noun μηρος (meros), but evidently not etymologically related to it.

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that our word μηρος (meros) may be Semitic in origin, and comprises the prefix מ (mem), meaning from, plus the common noun ראש (ro'sh), meaning head. That would put our word on a close par with the first word of the Bible, namely בראשית (bresheet), which simply means "in the beginning" but less simply tells of a continuum that is formed from the harmonic whole of many individual heads, within which all creation always begins. All throughout the Bible, the relationship between Creator and creation is told of in terms of a marriage, and so, the beginning of that is marked by the outpour, or ejaculation, of the Creator's Spirit upon waters.

In the New Testament, our word μηρος (meros) occurs in Revelation 19:16 only, in the description of the White Horsman, who has "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" written on the outermost of his outer clothing as well as on the innermost of his physical members. This phrase marks the primary principle of the Hebrew Republic, which emerges from the unchallenged sovereignty of all men (2 Corinthians 3:17, Galatians 5:1), whose central debate derives from heavenly unity (Revelation 7:4) rather than from the dominion or even the domination of any over others (Matthew 23:10, 1 Corinthians 15:24).