Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Exodus 20 and The Didache 7-8

Exodus 20 – The Ten “Words” or Commandments:  Schocken points out that they are unusual in that no penalties are attached for breaking them as in the more detailed regulations.  They are the framework against which the more detailed infractions can be understood.  The order differs for Jews as it does for Catholics and Protestants.  The following is the Jewish division:

Tablet 1

·      I am YHWH “who brought you out from the land of Egypt. . .

·      You shall have no other gods before me. . .

·      You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

·      Remember the Sabbath. . .

·      Honor your father and mother

Tablet 2

·      You shall not murder

·      You shall not commit adultery

·      You shall not steal

·      You shall not bear false witness. . .

·      You shall not covet. . .

Catholics and Protestants take the first as an introductory passage and not a commandment.  Then Protestants divide the second; Catholics divide the covet commandment.

The passage that begins with verse 15 is very interesting, because the people here recoil from the personal encounter with YHWH whom they see in smoke and fire.  “They say to Moshe: You speak with us, and we will hearken, but let not God speak with us, lest we die!” The people do not want a “personal relationship” with this God.  He is too overwhelming, too frightening to encounter.  They want Moses to be their intermediary, and Moses tells them God has come to them in such awesome countenance to inspire “awe” or fear in them and to show the people that He cannot be contained in figures of silver or gold (20:20).

So, here is the standard entry I will post each day - five days a week. That should get us to the end of Exodus by the next time we meet. Doing a little daily will give us a chance to notice things that we should discuss in greater depth.

The Didache

Here begins the Second part of the Didache – a manual of worship and discipline in an early Christian community, according to the introduction (188).

Part 2. A Church Manual

Of Baptism

7 – “The procedure for baptizing is as follows. After repeating all that has been said, immerse in running water ‘In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’. If no running water is available, immerse in ordinary water. This should be cold if possible; otherwise warm. . . . Both baptizer and baptized ought to fast before the baptism, as well as any others who can do so; but the candidate himself should be told to keep a fast for a day or two beforehand” (194).

Of Fast-Days and Prayer

8 – “Do not keep the same fast-days as the hypocrites. Mondays and Thursdays are their days for fasting, so yours should be Wednesdays and Fridays” (194).

“Your prayers, too, should be different from theirs. Pray as the Lord Enjoined in His Gospel” and make sure you pray this three times every day. Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Job 40-42 and Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8-10

Job 40 – Now God asks Job for some reply. And Job is brought low. “See, I am of small worth; what can I answer You? I clap my hand to my mouth” (40:4).

And God responds to him: “Gird your loins like a man; I will ask, and you will inform Me. Will you prove me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (40:7-9).

The powers of man are second only to those of God. He can grow food, keep the brook from rushing and rest in the shade of plants.

Job 41 – God continues – So if you cannot tame Leviathan, how can you stand up against God. The strengths of Leviathan are reviewed at length.

Job 42 – Job then replies to his God. “I know that You can do everything, that nothing you propose is impossible for You. . . . I spoke without understanding” (42:2-3).  But the main thing is now Job can say, “I see you with my eyes; therefore, I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes” (42:5-6).

After Job relents, the Lord expresses His anger at the three “friends” and tells them they must offer sacrifice. God’s anger against Job is gone, and He restores Job’s prosperity – gives him “twice” what he had before.

 “So Job died old and contented” (42:17).

Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans

8 – Ignatius urges everyone to “[a]bjure all factions, for they are the beginning of evils” (103). Maintain unity by following your bishop “as Jesus Christ followed the Father” (103). “Make sure that no step affecting the church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction” (103).

They should not go to a Eucharistic celebration if it is not led by a bishop or a person authorized by him. “Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church” (103).

All the celebrations of the church – baptisms and agape meals – must have the sanction of the bishop. “This is the way to make certain of the soundness and validity of anything you do” (103).

9 – Ignatius prays that it is not to late to get things back in order. It all seems to him to depend on submitting in all things to the bishops.

He thanks them for their support of him. “Absent or present, I have had your love; and may God reward you for it. Do but endure all things for His sake, and you will attain to Him in the end” (103).

10 – He praises them for welcoming the men who have been accompanying him (Ignatius) on his trip to Rome. “My life is a humble offering for you; and so are these chains of mine, for which you never showed the least contempt or shame. Neither will Jesus Christ in His perfect loyalty show Himself ashamed of you” (103).

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 17-18 and Acts 8:25-40

Sirach 17 – “The Lord fashioned man from the earth, to consign him back to it. He gave them so many days’ determined time; he gave them authority over everything on earth. He clothed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image” (17:1-3).

“He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and revealed to them good and evil. He put his own light in their hearts to show them the magnificence of his works” (17:7-8).

“Their eyes saw his glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of his voice” (17:13).

“One day he will rise and reward them, he will pay back their deserts on their own heads. But to those who repent he permits return, and he encourages those who were losing hope” (17:23-24).

Sirach 18 – “He who lives for ever created all the universe. The Lord alone will be found righteous” (18:1).

“What is man, what purpose does he serve? What is the good in him, and what the bad? Take the number of a man’s days; a hundred years is very long. Like a drop of water from the sea, or a grain of sand, such are these few years compared with eternity. For this reason the Lord shows them forbearance, and pours out his mercy on them” (18:8-11).

“Man’s compassion extends to his neighbor, but the compassion of the Lord extends to everything that lives; rebuking, correcting and teaching, bringing them back as a shepherd brings his flock” (18:13-14).

“In a time of plenty, remember times of famine, poverty and want in days of wealth. The time slips by between dawn and dusk, all things pass swiftly in the presence of the Lord” (18:25-26).

Acts 8:25-40 - Peter and John return to Jerusalem. There Philip experiences “the spirit of the Lord” (also referred to as an angel), telling him to get up and go south toward Gaza. On the way, he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Ethiopian Queen on his way home from worshipping in Jerusalem. He was seated in his chariot reading Isaiah.

The Spirit impels Philip to go and engage him. He asks him if he understands what he is reading, and the man answers, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (8:31), and he invites Philip into the chariot. The passage he is reading is about the suffering servant: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter . . .” (Is 53:7). Philip, using this scripture, proclaims to the man the good news about Jesus. When they come by some water, the eunuch asks if there is any reason why he may not be baptized.

A Jerusalem Bible note says that there is a verse, verse 37, that is an ancient gloss preserved in the Western Text that says “’If you believe with all your heart, you may.’ And he replied, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’” The verse is omitted in the NRSV and in the Jerusalem Bible translation (also the Good News version).

Philip does baptize the man. “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing” (8:39). Philip finds himself in Azotus (a town right on the Mediterranean in Gaza) and there proclaims the good news to all the towns between there and Caesarea (8:40).

 

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 24 and Colossians 2

2 Samuel 24 – The Lord gets angry at Israel and incites David to take a census - always a bad thing in Israel. It's interesting to ponder why it was seen as a bad thing, something "satan" would put into David's head. Numbering of people in one's "land" was tied with military service, and the whole concept of "state sovereignty," or organization of a people under the rule of a monarch was not something that flowed easily from Hebrew monotheism. Samuel warned against it as something not wished by God. God is the only "sovereign" power finally. It could be that some remnant of this concern lingers here. Joab warns against it (24:3), but the king insists. 

After nine months and 20 days, they return with the results—in Israel there are 800,000 “able to draw the sword” (24: 9) and in Judah, 500,000. After it is done, David become conscience-stricken. Gad, David’s prophet at this time, comes to him and asks what penalty he wants the Lord to exact - he can choose: 3 years of famine; 3 months of flight before his foes or 3 days of pestilence in the land. David chooses the last.  When he sees the devastation wrought, however, he says to God, “I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house” (24:17).

David buys the threshing floor of Araunah, a Jebusite whose place is threatened by the pestilence, and builds an altar there; he also buys the oxen to sacrifice and makes sacrifice there to the Lord.  The Lord answers David’s supplication and spares Israel any more suffering.

Colossians 2 – Paul tells the community, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him . .” 2:6-9).  This is fabulous writing, incredible articulation of exactly what it is to see and to live “in Christ.” Paul goes on to describe the mystery of Christian baptism.  “You have been buried with him, when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and had not been circumcised: he has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins” (2:12-13).

The next passage is one that Quakers make a great deal of: “Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.  These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (2:16-17). “Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings.  These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence” (2:20-23).

Everyone lifts what they want from Paul’s words, and some among Friends especially simply dismiss the words as “human teaching.” Early Friends did not dismiss Paul; they felt that they grasped the message he gave in a way most Christians of their day did not. It is true Friends made a great deal about the irrelevance of “human commands and teachings” – the shadow world of “outward” religion, but Paul’s words about Christ in this epistle were not this kind of “human teaching.”  Friends rooted themselves in this cosmic Christ and they experienced him as Paul did but in a different time.

Personal Reflection: The deep revelation of Christ as Logos, Light, Word and Spiritual Savior, the revelation that energized the apostles and built the community that was the early church is every bit as inexplicable (naturally) as the OT "exodus event" was for the Jews.  You will not find any easy verification of that event in historical records, but acceptance of it was the seed around which God brought together his first people – the Jews.  Acceptance of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection is similarly not an event you will ever find validated as simple history, but its reality, experienced by these first apostles, is the event around which “the nations” will eventually be drawn to the one God.  Like the Israelites before us, we accept the truth of it through trust in those who were there at the event, those who knew him, saw him risen, were given the gospel first hand; and we trust them because in some deeply interior way, we too encounter God in Christ as an incarnate, loving and saving God.  His face and voice and touch in us reveals God’s reality, discloses His nature, draws us powerfully toward Him and toward the lives we were meant to live as His people.  The Holy Spirit is the power and mystery of God present with us now even though the bodily Jesus is no more. But these are truths of a different order from the truths our mind and mouths are accustomed to dealing with.  They smash against the barriers our logic and materiality (corporality) present to them.  But it is the job of faith to stand even in the absence of every human aid.