Encouraging scriptures for the day (page 52)

PioneerSchmioneer

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
--Philippians 2:12

St. Augustine wrote on the above text in Philippians explaining that 'if you really understood that God was the one working in you to produce your good works and that everything was therefore a grace, you would really tremble with fear.'--On Grace and Free Will, 21.

While he wasn't suggesting literal fear but instead awe of the salvation process, it did tie in with the verse at Luke 11:13b:

How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Since the grace of salvation is only made possible by the life the Holy Spirit supplies working in each Christian to make them a "son" or child of God, it truly is an awe-inspiring concept.--Galatians 4:6.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the RSV: Revised Standard Version Bible, Ignatius Edition, Copyright © 1965, 1966, 2006, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Kosonen

Nice explanation PioneerSchmioneer ♥️👍

Kosonen

Research about my daily Bible reading: Where did the Israelites go when they left Egypt?

Exodus 14:1 Jehovah now said to Moses: 2 “Tell the Israelites that they should turn back and encamp before Pi·ha·hiʹroth, between Migʹdol and the sea, within view of Baʹal-zeʹphon. You are to encamp facing it by the sea.

The video is 2 and half minutes long.

https://youtu.be/JyZkvtjGOh8?si=TZOoMaCWB0vkesGE

PioneerSchmioneer

The traditional rendering of "Red Sea" for where the Israelites crossed is not found in the Hebrew text. That wording is found only in the Greek Septuagint.

In Hebrew manuscripts the body of water that the Jews cross is called yam suph, which means "Sea of Reeds" or the "Reed Sea" which is how the Jewish Publication's NJPS translation renders it and the Interdenominational CEB (Common English Bible) translates it, and the footnote in the new NRSVue explains it.

Yam is Hebrew for "sea" and suph means "reeds." Suph is rendered as "reeds" (not "red") in Bibles, for example in the New World Translation at Exodus 2:3:

She...put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile River.--NWT, Italics added.

The identity of this body of water is therefore uncertain. If the story is describing something historical, it might be suggesting an event near the inlet of Lake Mazala in northeastern Egypt, or the Gulf of Suez, or perhpas the Gulf of Aqaba, or perhaps even Lakes El-Ballah, Lake Timsah or the Bitter Lakes.

But it would have to be an area full of reeds and not the Red Sea as we know it today.

The apostle Paul, Jewish sages, and moden scholars suggest that the value of the narrative lies in its allegorical truths, as did St. Basil in his writing On the Holy Spirit.

Kosonen

Interesting information PioneerSchmioneer,

I had to check it up, what Red Sea really was in the original text. Here is what I found:

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5488.htm

Word number 5488 is for Reed.

PioneerSchmioneer

The northern branches of the Red Sea are reed marshes, and "migdal" is the word for a generic Egyptian fortress, not a city.

If this was historic, there were various ancient "migdals" throught the north where "reed seas" once existed. These could dry up overnight and flood in an instant due to regular weather and seismic activity.

peacefulpete

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5395358998331392/red-sea-stories-divided

PioneerSchmioneer

Thanks Peacefulpete. Good info.

The J, E, P, D has largely been replaced by R and D these days with almost no layperson materials yet updated with this, even though this is now the norm for about 30 years or so in modern documentary studies.

What happened was after the Qumran scrolls were discovered, it became clear that there was clearly a redactor, but since the Masoretic theories were far more correct than the Christian methodologies that created the Document Hypothesis it was revised using Jewish critical studies (which were largely ignored).

While the new hypothesis recognized the "possibility" of J, E, and P, it notes that it is more likely that a school of redaction influenced by the Babylonian exile created everything outside of D. So everything is now divided into simply R and D, with R being made up of possibly many sources, but in the end under a central type of redactor of some sort, likely a school of scribes working over a generation, possibly under a great scholar or Jewish prophet.

The latest edition of the NRSV Updated Edition SBL Study Edition from HarperOne is the first new layperson book I've seen with anything close to some of this new data from the past few decades--except it only touches on the New Testament. It published (finally) that scholars no longer hold to the Q theory. It will take another 10 years before the last 30 years of scholary work finally trickles down to study Bibles (and who knows how long before it hits Wikipedia).

PioneerSchmioneer

A footnote to my last post:

The lastest theories of the Old Testament source materials now do away with "document" recreations and redraw the creation of the Hebrew text as N and S or I and J, meaning a composition of writings that weave oral stories from the northern kingdom/Israel and the sourthern kingdom/Judah into what we have today, instead of the varied JPED sources hypothesized by German Protestants from the 1800s. (R and D is actually from the 1990s.)

And I meant to write "Q source" not "Q theory," indicating that over the past 30 + years, scholars have grown to abandon the Q source theory, reflected in the latest NRSVue study edition from HarperOne that I mentioned.

PioneerSchmioneer

I stand corrected by someone. The Jewish Study Bible, published by JPS, does use the new R and D model for the development of the Five Books of Moses instead of the old JPED hypothesis.

So it is finally being released to the public.

Encouraging scriptures for the day

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