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How I Taught New Testament Lesson 12

March 27, 2015 /

Last Saturday night, I was asked to pinch hit for Gospel Doctrine. Since my posts here aren’t written as lesson plans, what and how I teach often differ significantly from what I write. Our lesson ended with some text criticism, close reading, and critical thinking about tradition, and by the end of the lesson, I had a coherent thread tying it all together. This write-up is both minimal and all from memory, though.

We started by having everyone read John 5:1-18, the pericope about the paralyzed man who had waited 30+ years at the Pool of Bethesda to be healed by the moving water of the pool. We talked about the background of the pool a bit, and then moved into why they were there. We reread vss. 3-4.

3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. 4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. (Joh 5:3-4 KJV)

We pointed out that there were many people there. “Now, who has a different translation of the Bible?”… crickets… “Really? no one has a different translation on their phone or tablet?” …crickets… (I’d guess 80% of the audience had electronic devices.) “Ok…” I sent everyone to their browser, to http://netbible.org, John 5:3-4. While they looked it up, I talked about the NET Bible, one of those I recommend because it’s accessible, free, and has so many footnotes explaining the translation and alternates. Then, I had someone read starting in v. 3.

 3 A great number of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people were lying in these walkways. 4 5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. (Joh 5:3-5 NET)

As soon as he got to “now a man…,” I said “wait wait, what happened to the last part of 3 and all of 4? Where’s the explanation of the angel?”

“… uh… it says ’empty.’ Wait, they’re missing. Where did they go?”

Most modern translations omit the end of 3 and 4, because the oldest and best Greek mss. do not have anything there. The text is a late scribal gloss explaining the apparently common traditional explanation for why the water moved on occasion. Was that tradition true? Seems pretty unlikely. (FWIW, this pool also had non-Jews waiting there, it wasn’t just a Jewish tradition.)

So we talked briefly about the advantages of using modern translations, Apostolic citations of modern translations in the Ensign and General Conference, and the local Stake President’s usage of both the Jewish Study Bible and the Harper-Collins Study Bible, based on the NRSV. That was our text-criticism. If you’re interested in that kind of thing, I recommend you pick up this (accessible to non-specialists) or this (a bit more technical.)

Then we looked at this again from a different angle. This tradition was strong enough that this man had waited there for his chance for 38 years. Thirty-eight years! That’s a strong tradition. I explained that these later Greek manuscripts accurately (in all probability) represented an authentic tradition, something many people around the pool believed but wasn’t necessarily true.

I asked, “do we similarly have traditions in the Church? Things commonly believed that have been passed down, but aren’t necessarily true or well-founded?” Crickets, again.

Someone suggested caffeine, and I gave some brief background on the origins of that tradition with PhD chemist and Apostle John Widtsoe and his wife Leah. Someone else suggested “the Three Nephites” and those stories. Not a lot of suggestions about “tradition” though…

So I pulled out my copy (as I’d planned) of Deseret Book’s President Kimball bio, by his son, and gave some background on it. Then I read my commentary on this from the biography, on the power of tradition and one specific tradition.

President Kimball’s biography recounts that Joseph Fielding Smith was asked in 1963 whether it was necessary for faithful Latter-day Saints to believe that black men were denied the priesthood because of their activities in the preexistence. He replied,“Yes.” But when… asked for scriptural substantiation, Elder Smith reread the relevant passages, reflected, then finally stated, “No, you do not have to believe that Negroes are denied the priesthood because of the pre-existence.  I have always assumed that because it was what I was taught, and it made sense, but you don’t have to believe it to be in good standing, because it is not definitely stated in the scriptures. And I have received no revelation on the matter. (chapter 20, p5, footnote 12 of the PDF draft included in the book.)

The combination of tradition (“it was what I was taught”) and worldview (“it made sense”) contributed towards the assumption that such a tradition accurately represented God’s prior revelations on the matter as found in the canon. We talked about that a little, and moved back to John.

We talked about Jesus and accommodation, that he just healed the guy without correcting the tradition about the angel. We talked about Jewish traditional interpretation of the law, and “carrying” on the Sabbath, which goes back to Jeremiah 17:21 and Nehemiah 13:15. (Jesus healed the man on a sabbath and told him to take up his mat and walk.) We talked about Jesus claiming divinity by making use of Jewish tradition about God being exempt from the commandment to avoid work on the sabbath. (God had to “work” in making it rain, crops grow, etc.)

Eventually, we moved out of that passage to read John 5:39, a (former?) Scripture Mastery passage.

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. (Joh 5:39 KJV)

“Ok, back to your NET bible. Someone read it there?”

“You search the…”

“Stop. What’s the difference between these two translations, in the very first word?”

The KJV reads the Greek as a command, whereas the NET and many other modern translations read it as a statement, an observation. The Greek mss. don’t vary there, the Greek form is formally ambiguous. However, context shows that the NET is correct. I also pointed out that the NET adds the adverb “diligently” because it’s a continuous verb, “you study the scriptures continuously, repeatedly, frequently.”

I then wrote this on the board.

“You search the scriptures, for in them

a) ye think ye have eternal life.”

b)                ye have eternal life.”

What’s the difference between A and B, I asked?

A is the text of the KJV, and B is our “counter-text”, playing with what the text doesn’t say in order to figure out what the actual text means. How does it change the meaning when we drop out “ye think”?

The inclusion of it suggests that the statement “in them ye have eternal life” is Jesus’ observation about something they think, which he disagrees with, not a general statement of truth. (And indeed, John likes to use this verb “to think” as “to think incorrectly” e.g. John 11:13, 16:2. But you don’t need to know Greek to pick up on that, just read closely.)

What Jesus is saying, if we read on, is that his opponents study scripture constantly because they think (wrongly!) that that’s where eternal life is to be found… yet those scriptures point to him! He’s right there but they don’t accept him! Certainly we should study our scriptures closely, but that’s not what this passage is saying.

I closed by pointing out that in Jesus’ day, very few people could actually “study the scriptures” constantly or closely because a) very few people could read and b) even fewer people had access to Torah scrolls or Greek translations because of cost. Without scripture, most people were dependent upon oral tradition and the regular Sabbath reading of a few passages. Today, however, we all have scriptures, multiple free translations we can download at all and the vast majority of us are literate… Do we study the scriptures closely, or do we base ourselves and our teachings on tradition we assume are scriptural? Do we focus on what scripture points to, Christ the savior?

That’s how lesson 12 went in my ward. Apparently, they liked it.

Lastly, as always, you can support this site and my research by making Amazon purchases through this link, or the Support My Research links at the bottom of the About page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader.

NT Gospel Doctrine Lesson 8: Matthew 5

February 20, 2015 /
The hills and "mountains" around Galilee (my pic, on the NE shore. Up those hills and beyond are the Golan Heights.)

The hills and “mountains” around Galilee (my pic, on the NE shore. Up those hills and beyond are the Golan Heights.)

This begins the first of several weeks coverage of what’s come to be known as The Sermon on the Mount. While

well known to Christians today… few appreciate the richness of these sayings of Jesus: their radical promises and demands have often been blunted either through familiarity or as a result of a precipitate quest for immediate relevance.- Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, “Sermon on the Mount”

A few things about this.

Sundown over Galilee (my pic)

Sundown over Galilee (my pic)

First, this sermon only appears in its fulness in Matthew, occupying nearly three entire chapters. Many but not all of the same sayings appear in Luke 6:17-49, not on a “mountain” or good-size hill, but a plain, hence Matthew has the “sermon on the mount” while Luke has “the sermon on the plain.” Others of Jesus’ Mount sayings are scattered elsewhere. Notably, the Book of Mormon version, known as the Sermon at the Temple, with all the sayings together, hews closer to Matthew. (For lengthy thoughtful analysis, you can read John Welch’s updated book from Amazon, or online.)

Church of the Beatitudes (my pic)

Church of the Beatitudes (my pic)

Second, before looking at individual trees (as we LDS tend to do), we should step back and take a look at the forest. Matthew has arranged this very very carefully, to make a serious big picture point both about who Jesus is and about his relationship to the Old Testament.

Like other early Christians, Matthew viewed Jesus as the “new Moses” prophesied in Deut 18:15: “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.” This is why the life of Matthew’s Jesus closely parallels the life of Israel’s ancient lawgiver. Like Moses, Jesus was born as a savior. Like Moses, a foreign king tried to kill him. Like Moses, Jesus was hidden from the threatening king in Egypt. Like Moses, Jesus fasted in the desert wilderness for forty days and nights. Like Moses, Jesus returned from that desert experience and taught God’s people on the mountain. And in that Sermon on the Mount he presented his teaching as a new law that reversed and fulfilled the law of Moses. Also, in Matthew as a whole, the teaching of Jesus is presented in five sections, each ending with the words “When Jesus had finished saying these things.” This structure parallels the five books of Moses that stand at the beginning of the Old Testament. Once we realize that this was Matthew’s intention—to present Jesus as the new Moses of prophecy—then we are in a better position to appreciate the conclusion of his Gospel in Matt 28:16–20, commonly known as the “Great Commission.”
Readers will probably recall that, because of his sin, Moses was not able to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. At the end of his life, he stood on a mountain overlooking the land and said to the Israelites, “I cannot go with you, but God will be with you.… Go, and kill all the nations.” This parallels very closely what we find at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus takes his disciples “to the mountain” and there speaks his own final words: “Go, make disciples of all the nations … and I will be with you.” It is quite clear that Matthew wished to portray Jesus as a better Moses, who, because he was sinless, could address his followers from within the land and could extend the promise to be with them in their mission. Particularly striking, of course, is the profound contrast between the two missions: “kill all the nations” (Greek panta ta ethnē); “make disciples of all the nations” (again panta ta ethnē). Matthew apparently means to teach us that the true fulfillment of the command to kill the Canaanites is actually found in our efforts to convert the lost to faith in Christ. The Gospel is thus understood as a spiritual conquest in the name of Christ and for the good of the nations. So the Gospel of Matthew is a deliberate and sustained attempt to redeem the Old Testament law and make it serve the purposes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.- Kenton L. Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture, 68–69. (I’ve gained a great appreciation for Sparks recently. See the bottom of my post here.)

Another "mountain" on the N.E. of Galilee. (My pic)

Another “mountain” on the N.E. of Galilee. (My pic)

The sermon opens with a series of what are called the Beatitudes, from Latin beatus, meaning “blessed, happy.” The Latin translation of the Bible was, for all practical purposes The Bible for a long long time, which is why so many of our religious references are in Latin. (Think of Mary’s magnificat, or the nunc dimittis of Simeon.) The Latin, of course, was translated from the Greek… but most of what these people actually spoke was probably Aramaic or (less often) Hebrew.  There’s very little, if anything, to suggest that any of the NT was originally written in those languages, but they’ve left their mark in all kinds of ways, and this is one of them.

Church of the Beatitudes (my pic)

Church of the Beatitudes (my pic)

The form of the beatitudes is very Hebraic. If you go back into the Hebrew Bible to places like Psalm 1:1 “happy/blessed is the man who…”, we see the general pattern of celebrating certain kinds of people, people who do certain things by using the phrase ashrey, which means something like happy/blessed. (It is not the typical word for “blessed”, which may be familiar, baruch. If you’ve ever been welcomed in Hebrew, you’ve heard beruchim habba’im, lit. “blessed are those who come!”) These passages like Psalms get translated into Greek as makarios… which is exactly what we find Jesus saying in Matthew’s Greek Beatitudes. To capture the happy/blessed meaning of this, N.T. Wright in his translation prefers to express ashrey/markios this way.

3 ‘Wonderful news for the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours.
4 ‘Wonderful news for the mourners! You’re going to be comforted.
-Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone

Looking down to Galilee from the Church of Beatitudes (my pic)

Looking down to Galilee from the Church of Beatitudes (my pic)

A lot of expounding of these beatitudes and the whole sermon is based on English dictionaries or current meanings of things. I expect several classes to get into arguments discussions about “meek” or “perfect,” for example. Many of them involve either allusions to then-current ideas or allusions to the Old Testament. So, let’s look at a few

Matt 5:8 says, “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” References to the pure in heart are all over the OT, but one stands out in this context. Psalm 24 is one of three “temple entrance” hymns, and lays out the moral/ritual requirements for entry. This should be quite familiar, actually, as it used to be a Seminary scripture.

3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. (NRS)

The hill (“mountain”) of the Lord, and “holy place” are parallel references to the tabernacle/temple, which is where God was to be found. To enter into God’s presence and see him, whether in the visionary heavenly temple, or the earthly, one had to be “pure in heart.”

Looking east over Galilee from the LDS branch meetinghouse in Tiberias. The traditional Mount and Church of the Beatitudes are a few short miles off to the left.

Looking east over Galilee from the LDS branch meetinghouse in Tiberias. The traditional Mount and Church of the Beatitudes are a few short miles off to the left.

This is one of several pointers in the sermon towards a temple context, as John Welch argues (see linked book above.)

As for “pure in heart”, it shouldn’t be divorced from “clean hands” in this passage. Hands represented action, whereas your heart was the center of both emotion AND conscious thought. They did not have quite the same heart/mind dichotomy the way we do today. (See this short article .) To be pure in heart, then, was to have good motivations, to not rejoice in evil.

Moving on to another example, Matthew 5:48 says “be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Several things of interest here. First, we often don’t pay close attention to little words. What is the force of “therefore” here? Generally, it indicates that what follows is the logical conclusion of what has previously been said. How does that apply here?

Second, I think we make very different cultural assumptions about the concept of “perfect.” We talk about “the perfect day” or being completely sinless, and I don’t think either of those are in play here. So, what is?

Third, let’s talk about the Greek. This particular verbal form can be interpreted two ways, either as a command (as the KJV reads)… or as a future. While no recent  translation I’m aware of opts for it, it is possible to read (especially in connection with the “therefore”) as ” you will be perfect. (The 1901 American Standard Version says “ye therefore shall be perfect” which captures the ambiguity.) What might that suggest?  Continuing with the Greek, instead of interpreting based on one English word, (also known as a gloss or a translational equivalent), what is the actual semantic range of the Greek word here? The word is teleios, and you might recognize the root as the same one in television, telephone, etc. We don’t want to commit the root fallacy, etymological fallacy or any of the others (see Exegetical Fallacies), but it’s instructive that the tele– aspect has to do with distance, going far. The various Greek meanings (not all of which are appropriate here) range from fully-grown, mature (1Co 2:6), adult, complete, fully-developed, meeting the highest standard, expert, fully initiated (in a ritual sense).

In that light, let’s point out an interesting variant in the Book of Mormon. After Jesus finishes the Sermon at the Temple, he repeats this, with a significant difference. (To “translate” between Matthew and the Book of Mormon version, add 7 to the Matthew chapter number. So Matthew 5:48 is 3 Nephi 12:48.)

“Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” It’s suggestive (and no more) that whatever teleios means, it did not apply to Jesus at this point, but it does after his resurrection.
The other usual approaches to this is related to our modern ideas of perfection, and was expressed by Brigham Young.

“Be ye as perfect as ye can,” for that is all we can do, though it is written, be ye perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. To be as perfect as we possibly can, according to our knowledge, is to be just as perfect as our Father in heaven is. He cannot be any more perfect than He knows how, any more than we. When we are doing as well as we know how in the sphere and station which we occupy here, we are justified in the justice, righteousness, mercy, and judgment that go before the Lord of heaven and earth. We are as justified as the angels who are before the throne of God. The sin that will cleave to all the posterity of Adam and Eve is, that they have not done as well as they knew how.” – Brigham Young, JD 2:129-30

Lastly, as always, you can support this site and my research by making Amazon purchases through this link, or the Support My Research links at the bottom of the About page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader.

NT Gospel Doctrine Lesson 7: Mark 2:1-12

February 14, 2015 /
My photo of the synagogue at Capernaum.

My photo of the synagogue at Capernaum.

Each lesson covers a good number of stories. Today covers Mark 1-2, among others. Mark is generally thought to be the earliest gospel, though not the earliest NT book. Paul’s letters were all written before the Gospels, with Galatians probably being the earliest book written. (NB: That’s the date of composition, not the date of the events described nor the date of our earliest manuscripts.) Mark’s gospel also uses rougher Greek, and a gospel of action. Note how many times “straightway” and “immediately” appear in Mark, both translating euthus. Of the 50x euthus appears in the Gospels, Mark has 41 of them, creating a sense of action and immediacy.

 Jesus at Home

I love the story in Mark 2:1-12. Jesus is “at home” in Capernaum. That is where Peter’s house was, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother (Matthew 8:14). Jesus preached in the synagogue there, partially built with the financial support of the centurion (Luke 7:1, 4-5) whose servant he heals.

Most people don’t realize that this was probably Jesus’ own house. He had moved to Capernaum from Nazareth; the point of the first two verses is that when Jesus returned from his short preaching trip around the neighbouring villages, he found crowds pressing around the door as though he were a movie star or well-known footballer. Jesus himself was the unlucky householder who had his roof ruined that day.- Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, 16.

I’m not sure how to reconcile the idea of Jesus having a house in Capernaum with Jesus as the wandering preacher, with “nowhere to lay his head.” (Matt 8:20, Luke 9:58). Perhaps he established a home earlier as any Jewish man would do, and then sold it to support himself going about preaching? Or is it more likely that he stayed with Peter and Andrew so much in Capernaum that their house was “home” to him?

In any case, there at home, surrounded by a large crowd, four people come with their paralyzed friend, on his “bed.” (Beds were typically just mats.) They can’t get through the crowd, so they go up on the roof of the house. (Roofs were typically flat, and houses often had a stairway on the outside to get up to it.) Then, the KJV says they “uncovered the roof… and broke it up.” They “deroof the roof” and then “dig it up”, due to the probable mud/thatch roof layers. (Luke 5:19 mentions “tiles”, however.)

They lower him down, and Jesus, totally unfazed by people having just made a human-size hole in his roof, says “your sins are forgiven.” Some of the crowd does not appreciate this blasphemy, since God alone can forgive sins. I imagine that Jesus had a wry grin at times such as this.

‘Answer me this,’ [Jesus] went on. ‘Is it easier to say to this cripple “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say, “Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk”? ‘You want to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?’ He turned to the paralytic. ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.’ 12 He got up, picked up the stretcher in a flash, and went out before them all.- Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, 16.

Anyone can say anything they want, of course. It’s just as easy to say one thing as another. But to speak and change the nature of reality?

“Everyone was astonished, and they praised God. ‘We’ve never seen anything like this!’ they said.”

And that was exactly the point. Jesus could both forgive sins and heal the sick with a word. Even after they vandalized his house.

Tidbits:

    • On Mark 1:4 and “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins”-

      A much more expansive translation that conveys the meaning admirably is the twenty-two English words that Cassirer used to render Mark’s five words in Greek, baptisma metanoias eis aphesin hamartion (1:4): “a baptism which was to have its source in repentance and which was to result in people having their sins forgiven them.” Metzger, Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions, 145.

    • Peter’s house has been located, with a good probability of being correct. See this article with pictures.

Lastly, as always, you can support this site and my research by making Amazon purchases through this link, or the Support My Research links at the bottom of the About page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader.

NT Gospel Doctrine Lesson 6:

February 8, 2015 /

My photo of the synagogue at Capernaum, similar to the one in Nazareth where Jesus reads Isaiah 61.

My photo of the synagogue at Capernaum, similar to the one in Nazareth where Jesus reads Isaiah 61.

My focus today is on a passage from Luke 4. In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus gets up to read in the synagogue, and cites Isaiah 61 as being fulfilled. This goes over like a lead balloon as his once friends and neighbors “filled with rage…drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill… so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” (Luk 4:29 NRSV)

Jesus remarks that “no prophet is accepted in his own country” (KJV) or “no prophet is welcome in his home town” (NASB). The parallels in the other gospels read slightly differently- “A prophet is not without honor except in his home town, and in his own household.” (Mat 13:57 NASB), “A prophet is not without honor except in his home town, and in his own household.” (Mat 13:57 NASB)

Why should this be so, even, apparently, for Jesus? He was not a mysterious figure to them. They knew his family, his parents, and he himself. I remember as a teenager with growing consciousness of the Church, a video that played at the time Gordon B. Hinckley became President of the Church. With his disarming humor, I instinctively liked him, and as I learned more about him, I added a large measure of respect. Note, then, the reaction of his daughter to his call as an apostle.

“I was aware of the human weaknesses my parents displayed, and so Dad’s call came as a little crisis of faith for me. I thought, ‘How could the Lord call somebody like my dad who’s so average and sometimes lacking?’ At the dinner table that first afternoon while we were getting over the shock of what had happened, I said, using an expression I had heard Dad use in referring to missionaries, ‘Well, I guess the Lord is just going to have to work with what he’s got.’”- Sheri Dew, Go Forward With Faith, 198.

 

(I thought I remembered actually seeing her comments spoken in this video, shown around General Conference in the 90s. This is part 1.)

Now, I grant that, unlike Jesus, President Hinckley was neither sinless nor perfect. But what does it mean for Jesus to have been both of those things? I’ve heard people suggest (usually without much thought), that it means Jesus was The Best At Everything, that he never made any mistakes; If he played basketball, he would have never missed a shot, and his cabinets would have been the best cabinets around, from the very first day he ever touched a lathe or ball. Human mistakes made from learning and growing are not necessarily sinful, though. The idea that Jesus’ perfection entailed that he was the Best At Everything from Day 1, I think, denies both his humanity and the scriptures which talk about him learning and growing.

Jesus was not Superman. Many today, including some devout Christians, see him as a kind of Christian version of the movie character, able to do whatever he wanted, to ‘zap’ reality into any shape he liked. In the movies, Superman looks like an ordinary human being, but really he isn’t. Underneath the disguise he is all-powerful, a kind of computer-age super-magician. That’s not the picture of Jesus we get in the New Testament.- NT Wright, Luke for Everyone

Jesus continues, responding to the peoples’ objection, with two Old Testament stories which infuriate them further.
“there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” (Luk 4:25-27 NRS)

Elijah was sent to help a widow—but not a Jewish one. Elisha healed one solitary leper—and the leper was the commander of the enemy army. That’s what did it. That’s what drove them to fury. Israel’s God was rescuing the wrong people. The earlier part of Jesus’ address must have been hammering home the same point. His hearers were, after all, waiting for God to liberate Israel from pagan enemies. In several Jewish texts of the time, we find a longing that God would condemn the wicked nations, would pour out wrath and destruction on them. Instead, Jesus is pointing out that when the great prophets were active, it wasn’t Israel who benefited, but only the pagans. That’s like someone in Britain or France during the Second World War speaking of God’s healing and restoration for Adolf Hitler. It’s not what people wanted to hear. -NT Wright, Luke for Everyone

Jesus escapes the wrath of his hometown, and moves on elsewhere.

Tidbits:

Missionaries and others have a perennial interest in dusting of feet, mentioned in these chapters.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. (Mat 10:14-15 NRSV)

Dan Belnap edited a book for the Religious Studies Center at BYU on ritual, and his own paper is “’Those Who Receive You Not’: The Rite of Wiping Dust Off the Feet”

Lastly, as always, you can support this site and my research by making Amazon purchases through this link, or the Support My Research links at the bottom of the About page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader.

Mogget’s Musings: Lesson 6 (Luke 4:14-32)

February 7, 2015 /

This week I read from the assigned passages in Luke, beginning with Jesus’ visit to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. These segments of Luke represents a shift from his source in Mark in a variety of ways, two of which are significant for my purposes. First, I read the passage as a whole, then I will return and focus specifically on the content of the passage from which Jesus reads.

 

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