“Paul Writing His Epistles,” possibly even his Letter to the Romans. . .

This post is “Part II” of the Bible readings for Sunday, August 31.  As always, you can see the full readings at The Lectionary Page, but here are some highlights and commentary.

As noted in On the readings for August 31 – Part I, the OT reading for August 31 is Exodus 3:1-15.  The others are Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c, Romans 12:9-21, and Matthew 16:21-28.

Psalm 105 is a “two-parter,” a psalm so long it got divided in two.  Among other things, the text is relevant to the “Curse of Ham,” which some people used to justify African Slavery, “back in the good old days.”  See for example Curse of Ham – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

[I]n later centuries, the narrative was interpreted by some Jews, Christians and Muslims as a curse of, and an explanation for, black skin, as well as slavery.

But Psalm 105:23 notes, “Israel came into Egypt, and Jacob became a sojourner in the land of Ham,” to wit: Egypt.  Psalm 105:27 adds, of Moses and Aaron (see above), “They worked [God’s] signs among them, and portents in the land of Ham,” again referring to Egypt.  Thus – according to a strict interpretation of the plain meaning of the Bible text – all those years it should have been Egyptians working in those cotton fields.  (See also On “originalism”.)

More to the point, the International Bible Commentary summarized the theme of Psalm 105 as “God’s faithfulness to His promises,” and of verses 12-25 it added:

To the landless Patriarchs [of Israel], a handful of aliens and nomads among the various Canaanite states, the hope was an unattainable dream.  But even then God was at work. . .   He was in fact controlling nature and history according to His purposes. (E.A.)

Thus the mandate of Psalm 105:1, “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon His name; make known his deeds among the peoples.”

As to Romans 12:9-21, the IBC characterized its theme as “Love in action,” beginning with these words:  “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”

In verse 14 – “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” – Paul clearly “echoed his Master’s words” as set out in Matthew 5:14 and Luke 6:28.  In the same way he noted, “never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”  As for one allusion, see Proverbs 25:21-22:

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

In Matthew 16:21-28, “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering . . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  Later on He referred to Himself as the Son of Man, “an expression in the sayings of Jesus in Christian writings:”

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.  Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

But according to Son of man (Christianity) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the meaning of the phrase is controversial; so much so that “after 150 years of debate no consensus on the issue has emerged among scholars.”

On the other hand, Isaac Asimov offered a simpler explanation, that this was a cautious, “metaphoric way” of Jesus referring to Himself as the long-awaited Messiah in the Roman province of Judea, and thus at a time and place when both “the religious and secular leaders would strike quickly at those they considered were falsely claiming to be the Messiah:”

Perhaps this was useful at times when it was dangerous to be too openly Messianic in one’s hopes.  By speaking of the “son of man” one could indicate the Messiah to those who were in sympathy; but before a judge one might maintain that the phrase meant simply “man.”

Sometimes – it seems – it pays to be “as cunning as a serpent. . .”

 – The Scribe

The upper image is courtesy of Epistle to the Romans – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with the caption reading:  “A 17th-century depiction of Paul Writing His Epistles.  16:22 indicates that Tertius acted as his amanuensis.”  Romans 16:22 reads – in the New Living Translation – “I, Tertius, the one writing this letter for Paul, send my greetings, too, as one of the Lord’s followers.”  (An amanuensis “is a person employed to write or type what another dictates,” or copy what’s been written by another, or refers to a person signing a document “on behalf of another under the latter’s authority.”)  Wikipedia further indicated that Romans was “the longest of the Pauline epistles and is considered his ‘most important theological legacy.'”

See also Paul the Apostle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted that he is “generally considered one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age.   In the mid-30s to the mid-50s, he founded several churches in Asia Minor and Europe.  Paul used his status as both a Jew and a Roman citizen to advantage in his ministry to both Jewish and Roman audiences. . .   [H]is influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as ‘profound as it is pervasive.'”

The lower image is courtesy of Son of man (Christianity) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The full caption reads:  “Christ, by Titian – (detail) 1553, oil on canvas, 68x62cm, Prado Museum Madrid.”

The phrase “cunning as a serpent” referred to Matthew 10:16, in which Jesus cautioned, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. So be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves” (in the International Standard Version of the Bible). 

Moses before the Burning Bush by Domenico Fetti (circa 1614)

This post is on the Bible readings for Sunday, August 31.  As always, you can see the full readings at The Lectionary Page, but here are some highlights and commentary.

The Old Testament reading for today, Exodus 3:1-15, skipped over the “crime and flight” of Moses that occurred between last week’s account of his birth and this Sunday’s account of Moses and the Burning Bush.  (See also On the Bible readings for August 24.)

Between Exodus 2:10 and today’s Exodus 3:1, Moses changed in status from being a Prince of Egypt – literally – to a “felon on the run.”  Here’s how Isaac Asimov summarized the episode:

As a grown man, Moses found himself sympathizing with the Israelite slaves, presumably out of humanity and possibly because he had learned of his own origins.  [I.e., he learned that he too was Hebrew, even though he was raised as the adopted son of Ramses II.]   In a fit of anger, he killed an Egyptian overseer and, when this was found out, left Egypt hurriedly, to avoid execution at the orders of an angered Pharoah.

(From Exodus 2:11-25.)  Moses fled to Midian, just across the Red Sea and thus just outside Egyptian jurisdiction; “the shortest distance Moses could have traveled and placed himself outside the boundaries of Imperial Egypt.”  (Apparently they didn’t have bounty hunters.)

Asimov went on to explain that while Moses was in Midian, “getting married and having a son, a crucial change took place in Egypt,” to wit: the strong Pharoah Ramses II died and was succeeded by “the far weaker  Merneptah … usually thought of as the Pharoah of the Exodus.”  (See also Merneptah – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted this new Pharoah was the 13th son of Ramses II, and only came to the throne – at almost 60, “ancient” at the time – because the first 12 sons “had predeceased him.”)

All of which set the stage for Moses having a personal experience with The Force That Created The Universe, in the form of the Burning Bush, as shown above.  Moses was sheep-herding for his Midianite father-in-law Jethro (see also On Jethro inventing the supreme court), when he came upon a strange sight: “he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed:”

In the narrative, an angel of God is described as appearing in the bush, and God is subsequently described as calling out from it to Moses…   When Moses starts to approach, God tells Moses to take off his sandals first, due to the place being holy ground…  When challenged on his identity, Yahweh replies that he is the God of the Patriarchs … and that he is Yahweh [from the Hebrew] meaning he who is he, or I am that I am…  The text portrays Yahweh as telling Moses that he is sending him to the Pharaoh in order to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, an action that Yahweh is described as having decided upon as a result of noticing that the Israelites were being oppressed by the Egyptians.

See Burning bush – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Or as Exodus 3:14-15 put it, God spoke to Moses and said, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you. . .’   This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”

In other words, in his experience with the Burning Bush Moses had a theophany.  See Theophany – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which said the term came from the Greek meaning “appearance of god,” and “refers to the appearance of a deity to a human or other being.”

It also noted the term has “acquired a specific usage for Christians and Jews with respect to the Bible:  It refers to the manifestation of God to man; the sensible sign by which the presence of God is revealed.  Only a small number of theophanies are found in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament.”

One of those Old Testament theophanies was the experience of Moses and the Burning Bush, an event that not only changed his life but also altered history, and of which Wikipedia said:

As a powerful religious symbol, the burning bush represents many things to Jews, Christians and Muslims such as God’s miraculous energy, sacred light, illumination, and the burning heart of purity, love and clarity. From a human standpoint, it also represents Moses’ reverence and fear before the divine presence.

Incidentally, we all aim at just such a “personal experience with the Divine” by going to church and/or reading the Bible on a regular basis.  (In that way, we seek to emulate the experience of Moses “and the bush,” though not necessarily with the same spectacular results.)

For more on you yourself achieving just such a Personal Experience with the Divine, see prior posts such as Spiritual boot camp or On Thomas Merton.   (Or just type “mystic” or “mysticism” in the “Search” box above right.)   For more on the rest of the readings for this upcoming Sunday, see “On the readings for August 31- Part II.”

The upper image is courtesy of File:Domenico Fetti – Moses before the Burning Bush – … (commons.wikimedia.org/…/File:Domenico_Fetti_-_Moses_before_th…).  See also Domenico Fetti – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted that Fetti (c. 1589-1623), was “an Italian Baroque painter active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice.”

As to Isaac Asimov on Moses’ “crime and flight,” see Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Two Volumes in One),  Avenel Books (1981), at pages 129-130.

The lower image can be seen at Ezekiel’s Vision (Raphael) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted that it is “a c. 1518 painting by Raphael showing the prophet Ezekiel‘s vision of God in majesty.  It is housed in the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, Florence, central Italy.”  See also Ezekiel’s Vision by Raphael – Facts & History of the Painting, which added these comments:

…the prophet [Ezekiel] standing at lower left part of the drawing is almost unnoticed.  God is accompanied by cherubims, and symbols of the evangelists [Matthew, Mark, Luke and John] such as the ox, lion, eagle and angel dominated the whole painting.  The intricate illustration of the clouds and sharp detail at the rays are also impressive, making the painting truly a masterpiece.

 

The notes to the post Spiritual boot camp added this reflection:

The words “mystic” or “mysticism” seem to give some Christians apoplexy.  Try it on a Southern Baptist some time!  But seriously, one online dictionary defines a mystic as “a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute.”  Again, arguably different words but the same idea. . .

A highly stylized image – painted in 1740 – of Bithiah, the daughter of Pharoah who found the baby Moses in the reeds of the Nile River. 

The readings from the Bible for August 24, 2014, are Exodus 1:8-2:10, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8, and Matthew 16:13-20, as discussed below.

 Welcome again to DOR Scribe, a blog about reading the Bible with an open mind.

This post is about the Bible readings for Sunday, August 24.  As always, you can see the full set of readings at The Lectionary Page, but here are some highlights and commentary.

The first reading,  Exodus 1:8-2:10, marks a shift from the end of Genesis – with the Children of Israel being brought down to Egypt at the request of Joseph, who had become Pharoah’s right-hand man – to the beginning of the saga of Moses.   Note that according to tradition, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, so that in those five books he was giving his fellow Hebrews the complete history of the world – as he saw it – from the beginning of time up to the point where they were about the enter the long-awaited Promised Land.

(Note also that in that history of the world, Moses had to “tell the story using language and concepts that his relatively-pea-brained contemporary audience could understand,” as was discussed in On the readings for June 15 – Part I.)

Today’s reading begins with a new Pharoah ruling over Egypt, “who did not know Joseph,” and who got greatly concerned about the number of aliens who had come to dwell in his country.  (The ancient Hebrews were a very fertile people.  And why does this sound so familiar?)  So the Egyptians “became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter.”  Pharoah tried a number of other techniques to control the foreign aliens, including a command to “throw every newborn Hebrew son into the river,” i.e., to kill every new baby boy.

But the mother of Moses came up with the idea of putting her baby son into a waterproof basket, then setting it adrift into the Nile, but near where Pharoah’s daughter came to bathe.  Sure enough, Pharoah’s daughter – Bithiah, as seen above – saw the cute baby, fell in love with it and thus insured the boy’s survival.  And in the fullness of time she named him “Moses, ‘because,’ she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.'”  (Again, keep in mind Moses was writing about himself.)

Psalm 124 was characterized by the International Bible Commentary (IBC) as one of “divine deliverance,” using metaphors including that of a broken snare – as used to trap birds – leading to the ultimate lesson aptly summarized by Martin Luther.   Luther phrased it this way, in one of his hymn best-known hymns.  See A Mighty Fortress Is Our God – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:  “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.”

The IBC reflected that in Romans 12:1-8, Paul continued his reflection on the two sides of the Gospel – the believing side and the behaving side – and that it was “to the second side that Paul now turns.”  That is, he set down some general principles ranging “over most of life and also” – through analogy – “principles to cover every situation.”

Specifically – he said – we should “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  (Note the word discern.  It’s defined as being able to “recognize or comprehend mentally,” or to “perceive or recognize as being different or distinct” and/or to distinguish, or finally to “perceive differences.”  See definition of discern by The Free Dictionary.  Note also that it does not mean to accept “blindly” or without thought. . .)

Paul added we should “think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”  On that note see the “Blind Men and the Elephant,” at On reading the Bible.

And finally, the Gospel – Matthew 16:13-20 – was covered in the post On sharing the “Keys to the Kingdom”.  That post discussed the fact that Jesus did give Peter the “keys to the kingdom” at one point in time, giving rise to a claim by some Catholics that only they are going to get into heaven.  But it also noted that two chapters later Jesus gave pretty much the same power to all the disciples.  It noted the effect of such “later-imposed statutes,” and ended with this:

But what does the Bible say?   For one thing the Apostle Paul said, in Philippians 2:12, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”   Which is of course perfectly consistent with what he said much earlier, in Romans 10:9, “If you declare that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God brought him back to life, you will be saved.”  (Emphases added.)

Which leads to an illustration of what the Christian Faith should not be about:

The upper image is courtesy of Bithiah – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The caption for the painting reads:  “Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Finding of Moses, Bithiah, 1740, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.”   See also, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted that this Italian painter (1696-1770), was described as “the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman.”  The site further noted of some of his early works, “Despite their elevated subject matter, they are bright in colour, and light-hearted in mood . . . ‘a shimmering set of tableaux, full of wit and elegance.'”

The lower image is courtesy of http://df5eshuaiifdc.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/image/Busines%20For%20Home%20Reports%202011/Member_Only.jpg.  See also Members Only – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and/or Members Only – Official Online Store | Free Shipping, describing the “brand of clothing that became popular in the 1980s with the Members Only jacket.”

To hear an audio rendition of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” with the lyrics noted above, click on “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” – Martin Luther – YouTube.

As to the “RC” claim of exclusivity when it comes to getting into heaven, note that Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Mormons, Hindus and Buddhists – among others – all make pretty much the same claim. . .

“Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” – or arguing with God  – as discussed in a May 12 post. . .

The Bible readings assigned in The Scribe’s* church for Sunday, August 3, 2014 are:

Genesis 32:22-31, Psalm 17:1-7,16, Romans 9:1-5, and Matthew 14:13-21.

By way of catching up, last week’s Old Testament lesson was Genesis 29:15-28, about Jacob getting snookered by his future father-in-law Laban, who had two nubile (“marriageable”) daughters, Leah and Rachel.   The problem was that Jacob had the hots for Rachel and served Laban seven long years in order to marry her, but “they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”  That’s when Laban snookered him.

In that time and place, the older daughter had to get married off first, but Laban didn’t tell Jacob that until after the wedding night.  (What we would call today ex post facto.)   That is, at some point during the wedding and/or wedding night, that crafty ol’ Laban switched daughters, with the result that Jacob married Leah, the older daughter, and “went in to her.”  Jacob found out about it next morning,** and was naturally a bit sore. . .   But then Laban got him to serve another seven years, but that time Jacob got to really marry Rachel.

(Just as a side note:  Yours Truly got chastised after last week’s service – gently, by another member of the choir – for too-noticeably chuckling during the reading about Jacob and how he got bamboozled by Laban.  And a bit of foreshadowing: Jacob gets even with Laban, and is in the process of doing so in the reading for August 3.)

So anyway, last week’s reading was from Genesis 29, but this week’s reading skipped over the chapters where Jacob got tired of Laban taking advantage of him, and of taking “his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children,” and fleeing the country.  So he sent his whole family and/or clan all across the river Jabbok and was left alone.  That was when he ended up wrestling with an “angel” – who turned out to be God – and got literally “out of joint.”

This is a reading already covered in the post On arguing with God, the gist of which is that Jacob got his name changed to “Israel,” and so became a prototype for pretty much anyone and everyone who struggles with the idea of God.  That post then added:

The point of all this is that maybe – just maybe – we today are supposed to “argue with God,” or “wrestle with God,” or even “wrestle with the idea of God.”   Maybe, just maybe, that’s how we get spiritually stronger, by “resistance training” rather than passively accepting anything and everything in the Bible, without question or questioning.

And just as an aside, this day’s Gospel – Matthew 14:13-21 – has also been covered, by Another view of Jesus feeding the 5,000, which noted in part:  Maybe the lesson Jesus intended was that, by His example, He got a bunch of normally-greedy people to share what they had.

So maybe the Bible really is for liberating the human spirit, not shackling it. . .

The upper image, courtesy of Wikipedia, is Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, by Alexander Louis Leloir (1865).  Leloir (1843-1884), was a a French painter specializing in genre and history paintings. His younger brother was painter and playwright Maurice Leloir.

As to “the real Good News.”  The term Gospel is from “the Old English gōd-spell . . . meaning ‘good news’ or ‘glad tidings.’   The word comes from the Greek euangelion.”  See Gospel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  (Unfortunately these days that Good News seems to have been transmogrified into bad news, as in the perception, “How can we Christians get political power so as to control the lives of other people?”  That seems to be the perception anyway.  See e.g. Why are Christians so negative and judgemental? – RZIM Europe, Do Christians spend too much time being negative? – Christian …, and 5 Negative Effects of Complaining for Christians – Patrick’s ….   The gist of which is that this perception presents a problem for all practicing Christians.)

 *  As to the “Bible readings assigned in The Scribe’s church.”  Every once in a while I sink into the practice of illeism, referring to oneself in the third person.  See On Moses and “illeism”.

As to “ex post facto.”  See Ex post facto law – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted in part that it usually refers to “a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law.”  The term comes from the Latin for for “from after the action” or “after the facts.”

**  As to Jacob only finding out about Laban’s daughter-switch until the morning after the wedding, see Benjamin Franklin’s famously saying that “in the dark all Cats are grey,” at Letter from Ben Franklin gives advice on dating older women | ….

The lower image is courtesy of http://www.theimperfectprincess.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Perception.jpg.  Another note:  If you Google “perception is everything” you should get some 57 million hits.  One pity quote from Perception – Wikiquote:  “It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.”  

In other words, don’t limit the power of God to your ability to perceive Him. . .

And as always, you can see the full readings at  The Lectionary Page.