Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox and King James

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Genesis is the beginning most believers receive before they ever learn how to listen. It is where God is first encountered, where authority is first heard, and where judgment and mercy are first felt. The words used there do more than tell a story; they form an image that follows a believer for life. Two ancient records preserve this beginning. They tell the same account of creation, breath, command, fall, and exile, yet they do not always use the same words. Where the language aligns, confidence is strengthened. Where it diverges, the heart can be shaped in different directions. This is not an examination of God’s intent, nor an attempt to reinterpret Scripture. It is a careful accounting of wording itself. Line by line, sentence by sentence, the language of Genesis is placed beside itself to see whether any differences quietly tilt the reader toward fear, severity, or an image of God that competes with mercy. Most of Genesis stands in harmony across both records. God is sovereign, just, present, and purposeful. But a small number of verses carry weight far beyond their length. The way consequence, death, authority, and removal are described can either preserve trust or introduce distance. What follows is not accusation and not defense. It is witness. The words are allowed to speak as they stand, so that believers may know whether the God they met in the beginning was shaped by Scripture itself, or by the way Scripture was handed to them.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner This episode examines how Scripture can remain the same on the page while meaning shifts in the mind. Genesis did not move directly from Hebrew to modern English; it passed through living languages that carried responsibility, consequence, and condition differently than English does. Geʽez, the sacred language of the Ethiopian canon, preserved how authority was heard as burden rather than domination, and how death was understood as entry into mortality rather than immediate execution. English, shaped by power, law, and control, flattened those meanings without changing the words themselves. Tonight is not about rewriting the Bible, but about recovering how Scripture was originally heard—and why misunderstanding language has quietly reshaped theology, authority, and fear for centuries.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Exodus is where God’s power is no longer quiet. What was spoken in the beginning now moves into history through confrontation, deliverance, judgment, and covenant. This is the book where believers first learn how God uses power when oppression stands in the way of life. Two ancient records preserve this account. They tell the same story of slavery, calling, signs, escape, and encounter. God hears the cry of the oppressed in both. He acts in both. Yet the way His actions are voiced can shape whether power is heard as justice exercised with restraint or as anger unleashed without measure. This is not an examination of why God acted, nor an attempt to explain His intent. It is an accounting of language. Line by line, the words of Exodus are placed beside themselves to see whether differences in phrasing alter how God’s strength, patience, and authority are heard by the believer. Most of Exodus stands in clear agreement. God delivers. God confronts false power. God forms covenant. But certain verses carry weight far beyond their length. How hearts are hardened, how plagues are described, how fear is named, and how commands are spoken can either preserve trust or quietly teach dread. What follows is not accusation and not defense. It is witness. The words are allowed to stand as they are, so that believers may know whether the God revealed through power is the same God who declares Himself merciful and slow to anger, or whether translation has allowed fear to speak louder than faith.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Leviticus is where many believers first learn to fear God, not because of what the book contains, but because of how its words have been heard. This is the book that defines holiness, nearness, impurity, sacrifice, and consequence. The way its language is carried determines whether holiness sounds like an impossible standard enforced by threat, or a protective order that allows human beings to live safely in the presence of God. Two ancient records preserve Leviticus. They give the same instructions, the same priesthood, the same sacrifices, and the same boundaries. God does not change between them. What changes is how His holiness is voiced. Certain words can make God sound volatile, easily angered, and distant. Other wordings preserve precision, consistency, and care without reducing authority. This examination does not ask why the laws exist, nor does it attempt to reinterpret them. It asks whether the wording itself tilts the believer toward fear of punishment or understanding of order. Line by line, the language of Leviticus is placed beside itself to see whether holiness is being presented as danger to survive or as structure meant to preserve life. Most of Leviticus aligns clearly across both records. Sacrifice restores. Blood represents life. Confession opens the path back. Boundaries protect the community. But a small number of verses carry enormous emotional weight. How atonement is described, how guilt is voiced, how death is narrated, and how holiness is commanded can either quiet the heart or harden it. What follows is not accusation and not defense. It is witness. The words are allowed to speak without explanation or excuse, so believers may know whether the God they met in Leviticus was shaped by the nature of holiness itself, or by how holiness was translated to sound.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Numbers is not a book about wandering. It is a book about what happens when a delivered people struggle to trust freedom. The events do not change between the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox record and the King James Bible. The people complain. Leaders fail. Fear spreads. Judgment occurs. The question this examination asks is whether the language used to tell these events shapes God as reactive and angry, or as patient, corrective, and consistent while governing a fragile people. This episode exists because Numbers contains some of the most emotionally charged scenes in Scripture. Complaints are punished. Plagues break out. The wilderness becomes a place of loss. Depending on how these moments are worded, God can sound provoked by irritation or responding to breakdown of order that threatens the survival of the community. Line by line, this examination places the same passages side by side to see whether God is heard as lashing out at weakness or restraining chaos while preserving a future He has already promised. No motives are assigned. No behavior is excused. The words themselves are allowed to teach what kind of authority is being exercised. Numbers ultimately answers whether God abandons His people when they falter, or whether He continues to shepherd them even while correcting them. How that shepherding is voiced determines whether believers learn fear of failure or endurance under discipline.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Deuteronomy is not repetition caused by delay or failure. It is repetition born of urgency, love, and the knowledge that a people about to enter inheritance are more vulnerable than they were in bondage. Moses speaks knowing he will not cross the Jordan, and his words are shaped by the weight of that knowledge. This book exists to secure covenant memory before freedom reshapes identity, because a people who forget how they were saved will eventually redefine freedom in ways that destroy them. This examination places the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox record alongside the King James Bible to listen carefully to how Moses’ final witness is carried through language. The events, commands, and warnings remain the same, but the tone can determine whether Deuteronomy is heard as a book of fear and threat, or as a faithful shepherd’s last counsel meant to preserve life. The question is not whether obedience matters, but whether obedience is sustained through intimidation or through remembered relationship and chosen trust. Deuteronomy contains love, warning, blessing, consequence, failure, and return. It commands the heart, not just behavior. It anticipates rebellion before it occurs and provides a path back before exile ever happens. The book insists that the word is near, that the choice is real, and that life and death are not abstractions but outcomes shaped by covenant alignment. When the language preserves sequence and intention, discipline is heard as guidance and warning as mercy. When tone hardens, the same words can sound like a courtroom sentence rather than a father’s plea. This episode exists to slow Deuteronomy down and let it speak as it was intended to be heard: not as a threat hanging over God’s people, but as a final act of care meant to keep covenant from collapsing under fear, prosperity, or forgetfulness. Deuteronomy does not teach believers to hide from God when they fail. It teaches them to remember, to return, and to choose life, because the Lord Himself is their life.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Scripture did not arrive in English from the source. It arrived through history, through stewardship, and through explanation. What was preserved in Geʽez was never meant to be exported, and what most of us have worked from was the closest faithful access available, Amharic, carrying the meaning of an older, sealed record. This does not expose failure or deception. It exposes reality. The Ethiopian tradition protected its sacred language so meaning would not drift, and later generations explained that language so people could live by it. English entered this chain very late, receiving what had already been carried forward with care. Scripture never moved through history in a straight line. It moved through people, places, and languages, each serving a purpose for the time they were given. What the West received was shaped by Rome, Latin, and later English tradition. What Ethiopia preserved was shaped by early Christianity, Greek and Semitic sources, and a sacred language that was never meant to change once it was set. Geʽez was not preserved to be easy. It was preserved to be faithful. It was treated as a sealed record, held steady so meaning would not shift with generations. When people could no longer speak it, it was not replaced. It was explained. Amharic arose to help people understand what was already written, not to rewrite it or stand in its place. English entered this story after decisions had already been made and records had already been preserved. That distance does not mean truth was lost, but it does mean layers were added, and those layers matter. Confusion only appears when every language is expected to serve the same role. When explanation is mistaken for origin, and teaching is mistaken for record, the ground feels unstable. When each language is placed back where it belongs, the ground holds again. What remains is not suspicion, but clarity. God was not careless with His word. He was patient with it.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Joshua is not a book about God becoming violent. It is a book about promise becoming reality, and about what happens when faith must move from belief into action. The same events appear in both the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox record and the King James Bible, but the way those events are voiced can determine whether Joshua is heard as a story of divine rage and conquest, or as a measured completion of covenant governed by order, restraint, warning, and mercy. This book stands at a critical threshold. Moses has died. The law has been spoken. Memory has been secured. What remains is obedience lived under pressure, in a land already marked by long-standing judgment and long-standing patience. Joshua does not introduce a new divine posture. It carries forward what was already declared, revealing whether judgment unfolds impulsively or within limits that preserve continuity, choice, and accountability. Joshua contains battles, destruction, and loss, but it also contains pauses, inclusion, covenant honor, internal correction, and repeated calls to remember. Rahab is spared. Oaths are kept even when inconvenient. Excess is restrained. Land is apportioned carefully rather than seized recklessly. The narrative itself resists being reduced to holy violence when the language is allowed to speak in sequence. This examination exists because Joshua has often been used to portray God as angry, volatile, and indiscriminate. When the wording is heard carefully, especially alongside the Ethiopian canonical tradition, a different picture emerges: judgment that is bounded, mercy that is active within consequence, and a God who remains consistent with everything He revealed before the Jordan was crossed. Joshua ultimately asks whether obedience in the land is driven by fear of God’s wrath or trust in God’s faithfulness. How the language carries command, victory, failure, and covenant renewal determines whether readers learn to associate God with domination or with faithful governance under severe conditions. This episode slows Joshua down so it can be heard as it was meant to be heard: not as justification for violence, but as testimony that promise, once given, will be fulfilled without God abandoning restraint, mercy, or covenant integrity—even when judgment must occur.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner What follows is not a story about a violent God or a failed people. It is a record of what happens when covenant is inherited without being remembered, and when freedom is received without discipline to sustain it. Nothing new is introduced here. Everything that unfolds has already been warned about, named, and permitted long before it appears. Judges does not describe God changing posture. It reveals what becomes visible when restraint is no longer reinforced by obedience. Deliverance still comes, mercy still interrupts collapse, and cries are still heard, but the ground underneath those cries is thin. Relief replaces repentance, and memory fades faster each time peace returns. What unravels in this record is not leadership alone, but reference. When authority is no longer anchored in covenant, everyone becomes their own measure. What feels right replaces what was commanded, and sincerity begins to masquerade as faithfulness. The absence that defines this era is not God’s presence, but remembered obedience. The repetition is deliberate. The cycles are not punishment escalating, but exposure deepening. The same failure is allowed to surface again and again until it can no longer be mistaken for accident or misunderstanding. This is not cruelty. It is patience that refuses to lie about consequence. Judges stands as a mirror held steady, not a verdict shouted in anger. It shows what happens when a people cannot carry freedom without structure, mercy without memory, or inheritance without formation. Nothing here is meant to terrify. It is meant to be seen, clearly and without excuse.

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner Ruth is not a break from Judges. It is the answer Judges quietly demanded. Where Judges exposed collapse at the level of tribes, leadership, and collective memory, Ruth narrows the frame to show what covenant faithfulness looks like when almost everything else has failed. God does not speak more here. He intervenes less. And yet covenant advances more securely than it did through power, deliverers, or force. This book does not explain suffering, justify famine, or resolve grief. Loss is allowed to stand without correction. Naomi’s bitterness is not rebuked. God’s silence is not filled in with commentary. What carries the story forward is not rescue, but loyalty practiced under pressure, obedience remembered without reward, and faithfulness lived in obscurity. Ruth’s words are not romance. They are covenant. Her decision is not emotional attachment but binding commitment made in a moment where nothing is promised in return. The Ethiopian Tewahedo cadence preserves this sobriety, while the King James allows the listener to hear how easily obligation can be mistaken for sentiment. Side by side, the text shows how wording shapes perception without changing the act itself. Provision in Ruth is ordinary. Gleaning replaces miracle. Law replaces spectacle. Righteousness is expressed through attention, restraint, and process rather than divine interruption. Boaz does not receive visions. He remembers what covenant requires and acts accordingly. Redemption unfolds publicly, legally, and patiently, with God advancing His purpose without ever announcing Himself. Placed after Judges, Ruth proves something essential. God did not withdraw. Covenant did not fail. What failed in Judges was memory at scale. What endures in Ruth is obedience carried by the few when the many could not sustain it. This book stands as evidence that faithfulness does not need power to be real, and that God can move history forward through quiet loyalty when restraint is all that remains.