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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for collecting daily manna), make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, October 11, 2018
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:Subjecta:The Purpose of the Parables [2] Bible Verse:Matthew 13:14-17 (ESV) "This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" Message:
The quote from Isaiah (Isaiah 6:9-11) is reworded in Matthew so much that its meaning has changed. Consider the original, for it creates great difficulties:
“Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:“ Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, . . .”
We need to take a short side trip into the history of the Bible. Around 300 B.C., a group of seventy Jewish scholars normalized the sacred books of Judaism and translated them into Greek. This is known as the Septuagint (“septuaginta” being Latin for “seventy”). We can call this the “Greek Old Testament”. This was the most accurate and consistent Jewish Bible available, even though it was written in Greek — and many Jews, in fact, spoke Greek but little (or no) Hebrew.
A thousand years later, a group of Jews (known as the Masoretes) undertook to formalize the Tanakh, or Jewish Bible, in Hebrew; the work spanned centuries and was probably finished about 1000 A.D. It is formally known as the Masoretic Text, although we can properly call it the “Hebrew Old Testament”. This is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Judaism.
Here is the problem: The more accurate (Hebrew) Masoretic Text did not exist in the earliest days of Christianity, when the books of the New Testament were written, and the Septuagint, written in Greek just like the New Testament, might have informed some of the writers. But when the Reformation occurred in the 16th Century, and the Protestants wrote their own Bible, they were able to use the more authoritative Hebrew Old Testament codified in 1000 A.D.
This is, in part, where the Apocrypha comes from. They are books included in the Greek Old Testament but omitted from the more authoritative Masoretic Text. Luther, Wycliffe et al., having the benefit of the great Jewish scholarship of the Masoretes, adopted the Hebrew Old Testament as the Christian canon and dropped a number of books. So all Protestant Bibles have 66 books (39 in the Old Testament) while the traditional Catholic Bible has 73 books (46 in the Old Testament).
The great English Protestant Bible, the King James Version, included these additional seven Old Testament books as the “Apocrypha”, since they were excellent and approved reading for Christians, but not considered canonical (sacred) by Protestants. There are four historical books: Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees; two wisdom books, Wisdom (The Wisdom of Solomon) and Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus); and one prophetic book, Baruch. The Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant New Testaments are substantially identical.
The Biblical canon really is not an insurmountable barrier between Catholics and Protestants today. Unfortunately, the length of these notes is an insurmountable barrier to further discussion, so we will have to continue this tomorrow.
Meditation : . Prayer : Now unto him that is able to keep me from falling, and to present me faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever......Amen |
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