The three-fold naming caught my attention this morning. Jesus refers to his "new name"--presumably new to us, since we just have the human name of Savior. He sometimes refers to God the Father as "my God". So what is the relationship of the name of the new Jerusalem to the other two names?
The presence of the Holy Spirit, maybe?
I don't see "founder effect" -- the subsequent trajectories of the two tribes was quite different despite Israel's joint curse. But it's a curious note.
He was a thief, and helped himself to what was in the moneybag. How did John know? Matthew, a tax collector, might have spotted small discrepancies easily enough, and told Jesus, and John, close to Jesus, heard of it. Was Judas afraid of exposure, unwilling to repent?
I've read it proposed that Judas, knowing Jesus' power, wanted Him to quit dilly-dallying and use that power and popularity, and so tried to force Jesus' hand. It didn't work the way Judas hoped, hence his despairing not-quite-repentance. It's quite plausible, but not supported by the texts.
Or perhaps he was jaded with miracles. Many others saw the same miracles and merely got angrier with Jesus, and not at all interested in following Him. Jesus had said some things that would be really hard for a good Jew to listen to ("eat my flesh"), and maybe Judas was wondering if Jesus was really good. We're told that the disciples, when on mission, were also doing miracles--perhaps Judas did some miraculous healings too. People are really good at forgetting inconvenient things, but that would be a doozy to try to forget.
Or perhaps he was sloppy and the devil slowly took hold of him.
Or perhaps his motives were a mix of all of the above.
I heard it asked if Judas had a choice; if the prophecy meant that somebody had to betray Christ. I think that's a bit backwards. If Judas had chosen otherwise, the prophets would have been told something else to say.
It's been claimed that Peter is Everyman, standing in for us all, denying Christ through fear and surprise. But so is Judas, betraying Christ and perhaps not entirely sure why. And so is Thomas, doubting the testimony. And so is John, loved by Christ.
It's a trivial difference, and both readings make sense and neither changes anything about the thrust of the passage.
But the image of "those who dwell in heaven" is different between the two. With the "that is, those who dwell in heaven" reading, all those in heaven have the Spirit of God within them, and are also a kind of tabernacle and a kind of incarnation.
Catholic and Orthodox devotions refer to the Virgin Mary as the tabernacle--the place where God is/was staying. Some call her the first of the new tabernacles. Seems reasonable.
Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” 28 Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” 30 So they said to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’”
"What then do You do for a sign?" In light of what happened just the day before, that's an odd question. "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness" Hint hint hint.
"You just gave us ordinary bread and fish. We want a jazzier miracle."
I'd thought it was a Roman thing, but apparently he knew a bit of the local custom.
Unfortunately I am as wise as before; these don't map into categories I use.
At least it is clear that when one is told to "keep" the testimonies and statutes, the testimonies -- things God said that aren't commands -- are as important to remember as the rules.
Another aspect came to mind today. Genesis said and Jesus emphasized that "the two become one flesh." I'm a bit protective of my flesh, and I don't want my internal organs exposed to the day and the inspection of outsiders. (Surgery is a big deal!) It interferes with the mutual operations of the organs, and leaves the self in an inharmonious state, not an organic whole. If two are one flesh, an outsider likewise leaves their "one flesh" in an inharmonious condition, not a unified whole.
I've heard it claimed that a couple is "one flesh" in their children, which is no doubt true in some sense, but not, I think, the main meaning. Paul wasn't writing about having children with prostitutes.
I was told that the translation is traditional, but poor -- there are two words for dog and this is the one "kynarion" that means puppy, as opposed to "kyon" (as used in Revelation 22:15) that means "dog" in a perjorative sense. The Mark passage reads a little differently with that translation:
it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the puppies. But she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, but even the puppies under the table feed on the children's crumbs"
You get the picture, right? Kids feeding the pet dog under the table? It's a lot less harsh.
I gather (same source) that some preachers want to imagine that Jesus learned a valuable lesson about racism from the woman's faith, i.e. Gentiles are just as good as Jews.
Well, there's an extended story that Mark tells earlier, from Mark 4:35-5:43. Jesus tells His disciples to head to the other side of the lake. A storm scares them half to death and nigh sinks the boat. On the other side they meet a demon-possessed pagan, whom Jesus exorcises and sends home with the mission to tell everyone about what God did for him. AFAIK, this is the first apostle whom Jesus commissioned. Jesus cared enough about this (pagan) man and his subsequent mission that travel, scaring His (jewish) disciples silly, the fate of a herd of pigs, and even the temporary death of Jairus' (jewish) daughter were secondary.
That sounds like He had very different priorities than I would have, but they're certainly not bigoted.
I would have written the last as "apart from the Law sin is paralyzed," but it turns out God didn't invite me to write a letter to the Romans, so take my preferences for what they're worth.
Anyhow, Paul uses death in several different ways here, requiring careful reading, hence some of the discussion.
One image that covers some of the description for me is that of a little child, too young to understand the rules, but not too young not to want to break them once found. Parents will know what I'm talking about.
How come Adam gets the blame and not Eve? I've heard a several different explanations, which make assumptions about what was going on (Adam forgot to tell Eve the directions, Adam was standing right there, Adam was head-of-household responsible for what Eve did) that resolve into making Adam the main culprit. But if we're making assumptions, why not assume that Paul is rhetorically using the first man as a stand-in for us all, since the Romans passage goes on to say that all sin. That's been the implicit assumption in most discussion of Romans 5, might as well make it explicit.
In Romans 4:11-12 Abraham is described as the father of both the circumcised and uncircumcised believers. In 18-20 he is described as having unwavering faith that God would give him a child. If I read Genesis correctly, he, impatient, got part of that a little confused and tried a shortcut with Hagar (at Sarai's suggestion). So perhaps Abraham is also the father of those of us who believe but get things a bit confused sometimes.
Which, of course, leads into Zacharias vs Mary: "How will I know" vs "How can this be" aka "Can you show me some ID?" vs "What do I need to do?" With answers "OK, you'll be the proof" and "Nothing." Abraham might have done better to ask "How will this be?" and get details clear.
And somehow the question of whether there can be peace without freedom came up at table today. That reminded me of a famous song, which I may not be remembering entirely correctly...
The crown has made it clear The climate must be perfect all the year A law was made a distant moon ago here July and August cannot be too hot And there's a legal limit to the snow here In Camazotz The winter is forbidden till December And exits March the second on the dot By order summer lingers through September In Camazotz
I'd always found Jesus' comment to be a bit of a non-sequitur: "So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers; because it was they who killed them and you build their tombs."
Burying the dead was a mitzvah, an act of true kindness (unrepayable), that even the high priest was obligated to do if nobody else was around.
But thinking of the lawyers as professional theologians made it click. Their ancestors didn't care for the prophets' messages, so they killed them. The lawyers made sure to carefully reinterpret the messages to make them harmless--bottle them up. Burying the dead is not the same as building a big tomb to hide them behind. We've seen tombs and mausoleums impressive enough to make us forget who it was supposed to remind us of.
The last woe ties in with this interpretation: "you have taken away the key of knowledge." Obscuring the spirit of the law with details, or an "explanation" of why it doesn't mean what it says seems like a good way to do that. And Jesus called out an example of that elsewhere: something dedicated to God (corban), even if the actual gift was delayed and you still enjoyed beneficial use of it, could not be used to take care of your parents, despite the explicit command.
Of course a more usual take also works to explain the last woe: "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" = key of knowledge, and piling up a heap of human rules can obscure the "fear of the Lord."
Applications... It's no trouble at all to find theologians adept at justifying the unjustifiable. Are there hard passages I gloss over? Or at least don't think too much about? Um, yes. I'm guessing that those need more listening, even if my applications don't change.
"Judgment" is a bit ambiguous. What's its purpose? Condemnation, or "Houston, we've had a problem"? It's a lot easier to notice a problem and take warning than to evaluate all the details. I have to apply some judgment, enough for my needs and responsibilities (Is that guy likely to prove a threat? Would she be a good teacher?), but more than that may be encroaching on God's turf.
Romans 2:7 and 2:8 both describe people who persevere--clear cut "trying to be good" and "trying to be bad". Judging the lazy is a bit messier. Though there's always Laodicea.
We don't go in a lot for gnostic "special knowledge needed for true salvation" explicitly, but we seem to emphasize classes more than practice. Of course it's easier to get people to show up for most sessions of a class than to scrape together a snow-shoveling crew of the able-bodied (who have to get to work or school too). But "render to each person according to his deeds" suggests that maybe taking class notes isn't quite all that's required.
Judgment for all, for the Jew first and then the Greek. The order seems to reflect who got the explicit revelations from God, and from whom more is expected. If so, Christians, following the revelation of the living Word, seem likely to be first in line now.
One obvious question is "Where in the Lord's Prayer does one ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit?"
I wonder if it comes from basileia: "bas-il-i'-ah; from G935; properly, royalty, i.e. (abstractly) rule, or (concretely) a realm (literally or figuratively):—kingdom, + reign." If the word means kingship, and the invitation is implicitly for that to come beginning with us, then perhaps that part of the request is for God's kingship to be in us. If so, thanks to God's simplicity, that's a request for God to be in us.
Yes, I know Matthew has something a bit different.
Why the change in preferred texts? Some early Christian writers accused the Jews of removing books and concentrating on a variant that provided less support to Christianity. I can imagine them preferring "a young girl shall conceive" over "a virgin shall conceive" for that reason, but I don't see that Tobit is all that supportive of Christianity. In fact I've read that the Orthodox accept the Deuterocanonicals as canonical, but as "second-class" as far as supporting doctrine.
Wikipedia claims that "Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE." That's suggestive.
If the scholars in Alexandria decided on the "proto-septuagint" variant manuscripts as being the best, they'd have collected as many as possible to provide the translators with their material. In a land without printing presses, there might not have been a lot of them to begin with -- though synagogues should have had a copy of the Torah, so there should have been a lot of those.
Which manuscript tradition to pick might therefore have been based on geography -- what was available locally. Translators mentioned in the link above were in modern Turkey and Greece, not Egypt. If the Alexandrians snarfed up most of the proto-septuagint types for their translation project, that would leave the rest for everybody else. The Dead Sea scrolls were proto-masoretic over proto-septuagint by 12 to 1. (A looser version made up 20%, and others 15%.)
My own take on the Deuterocanonicals from years ago was that they were mostly harmless, and sometimes wise, though here and there (perhaps translation issues?) were some things that don't fit well with the gospel (a daughter is a loss?).
The police tend to arrest more of the poor--because the other poor are the ones who need the help most often. The violent and the oppressors are often neighbors. The slaver is on the street corner.
That did seem curious: oil was used for anointing, right? I hadn't noticed that before. I used the Gutenberg KJV to look.
Genesis has oil put on pillars to mark a place of worship. 2 references.
There are 11 uses of the word "oil" in reference to the temple lamps, and 55 for putting on the offerings. Note: two explicitly don't involve oil—the sin offering and the jealousy investigation offering.
39 are for some kind of anointing, 14 have to do with food, and 29 are kind of generic (produce of the land, etc). Perfume shows up once, as does oil for the skin and for general health. 3 times for healing, 2 times for use in other lamps, and 3 times the oil of gladness appears.
The only things that stand out to me are the exceptions to the oil on the offering. I don't think the jealousy offering has any significance to Jesus' mission (did the spouse commit adultery?). The sin offering, though…
"make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose."
