Matthew 10:1–8 — Jesus Sends the Apostles to Israel

Victor Porton’s personal theological reading of Matthew 10:1–8; the views below are the author’s interpretation.

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Editorial note: The source file is named Matthew 9:1–8, but the quoted passage about Jesus sending the twelve apostles corresponds to Matthew 10:1–8.

Matthew 9:1-8 > 1 And having called to him his twelve disciples, he gave to them power over unclean spirits, so as to be casting them out, and to be healing every sickness and every disease. 2 And of the twelve apostles the names are these: (I skip) and Judas Iscariot, who did also deliver him up. 5 These twelve did Jesus send forth, having given command to them, saying, “To the way of the nations go not away, and into a city of the Samaritans go not in, 6 and be going rather unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 7 And, going on, proclaim saying that, the reign of the heavens hath come near; 8 infirm ones be healing, lepers be cleansing, dead be raising, demons be casting out–freely ye did receive, freely give.

First note, that he gave to them power over unclean spirits (something, we don’t know what, maybe infectious bacteria, definitely bad), but casting out were daemons, another entity. Daemons in the ancient Greek as used by Jews, meant gods of nations, not necessarily evils ones, but inferior to Yahweh or Elochim, the God of Israel. Casting daemons therefore means extending Israel to all nations, in other words, in modern times all nations are Israel.

Does healing every sickness and every disease contain for example growing back lost hand or leg? Comment whether 12 apostles had that power or authority or no.

“Freely ye did receive, freely give” is a prophecy about Richard Stallman’s (an atheist who fulfilled a Jesus’s prophecy) about GNU General Public License (GPL) and Affero GNU General Public License (AGPL) – basically the licenses, that allow freely received software to be distributed freely, only. This is the Jesus preferred choice of several (or rather, many) open source licenses that we have.