Biblical Literacy and 2 Cor 3

[wicklunds]

How is it that my views are cultic paranoias and yours are sacrosanct? You just threw fuel onto the fire nic.

[Nicodema]

You are the only one who said mine are sacrosanct. I never thought or implied any such thing.

And by the way you don't intimidate me. I used to be you.

Nico

[wicklunds]

So now you're the new and improved version who is that much more closer to the WWJD Christian? Well, congratulations if that means anything to you.

[Nicodema]

See, you are still demonstrating you cannot enter civil discourse. I will not be drawn into tit-for-tat with you. You know not of what spirit you are.

[wicklunds]

Like I said in the beginning, you called my character into question with the cultic paranoia comment and now are claiming that your religion is higher than mine. And I ask myself, is this what Jesus would do?

[Nicodema]

I asked for your help as a weaker sister not to place your stumbling blocks before me. You are behaving like someone who sees everyone as a potential suspect in your private cultic paranoia trip, yes, that is how I would characterize what I am seeing. It is something I recognize, and I know whence it comes. I also know where it leads -- or at least where it led in me; different people might have different outward experiences, but Satan is still Satan, whether you call him that name or whether you call him God, whether you worship him or whether you tell yourself you have nothing to do with him while doing his work. I know the smell of the deceiver's breath, and I know what attitudes marinate in it. I know this NOT because I'm some gifted saint but because I'm a wretched sinner who has been there, done that, so don't insult me with all this "you think you're holy" claptrap because I don't. I think I'm a wretched sinner and I'd like to find my way to the Saviour if you don't mind. Now if you will excuse me, your attitude is getting in my way and I'm asking you to drop it. If you won't, just say you won't, but don't waste my time arguing over it like there's something wrong with me for asking you to take this stumbling block out of my path.

You're the one who has posted like you are such the great preserver of the ancient landmarks. I can see right through you to something behind you and it terrifies me, I don't like what I'm seeing. I'm not a prophet, why does God make me have to see things I am unfit and inadequate to express? Would it help if I begged you? All right, I am BEGGING you as your weaker sister PLEASE remove the stumbling block from the path because I am not capable of bearing it. And pray for me that I might learn how to bear it but in the meantime have pity on my weak and failing soul. Is that good enough for you?

[wicklunds]

If what I have said has caused you to stumble then I humbly apologize. I would hope you would similarly repent of any offense you also might have typed about others in your own posts...

[Ron Amnsn]

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It does not surprised me that the NASB translators failed to include a cross-reference to Deut 6:6. Because those translators are living as if the Old Covenant has been totally abolished, they tend to include only the cross-references that put their theological position at the forefront.

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I'm not familiar with how "those translators are living?" Do you kow them?

Interestingly, that is in fact an attack on their character, followed by one on their intellectual integrity.

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Is it an attack on a person's character to assume that they live according to their own doctrines and teachings?

It is possible that I am wrong about how they live, but if any of the NASB translators were Sabbath-keepers or Torah-observant believers like Paul was, I think we would have heard about it from other Sabbath-keepers or Messianic Jews.

Rather than attacking their intelectual integrity, I intended only to point out a tendency of all human endeavors-- that we include only the things we are aware of, and the things that we think may have some validity. This is not the result of a sinister plot or intellectual dishonesty (as I have explained previously elsewhere on this forum). It is a nearly universal human trait, which I myself share. In my experience, (which is not comprehensive by any means) I have noticed there is a very strong tendency for people to translate and/or interpret the Bible so that it agrees with their own doctrines and lifestyle choices. That is all I intended to say. I may have worded it poorly.

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You missed the entire point, here. I guess you missed this part of the post:

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Now, much of the passage is based on an allusion to real events in Exodus 34. Without that allusion, we'd have a puzzle.

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Yes, I noticed that you had mentioned Exodus 34. I have diagrammed two verses that Paul includes from Exodus 34 so that they go together.

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I point out with the emphasis the rather large parts of the second text you leave

out

.

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I'm not sure I get what you mean by "leave out". I think the grammatical sentence diagramming that I have used is quite standard, although simplified. It shows that the phrases "with unveiled face" and "as in a mirror" modify "beholding", which is part of the main clause of the sentence. Grammatical sentence diagramming may not be ideal for showing logical flow, but it does help to sort out which phrases are part of the main clause of a passage.

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But the real problem is that it just doesn't make any sense

"we are not as Moses"

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,"

Don't you see it? Moses saw the glory of the Lord "with unveiled face", and your link says we are not "with unveiled face," but we "are" "with unveiled face." It's simply mutually exclusive: we're not like Moses while at the same time we are.

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I think we can agree that Paul was contrasting some specific aspect of Moses with some specific aspect of "We". If I tried to use this passage to prove that "We" did not have faces, using the logic thus: Paul said that Moses had a face, and Paul said "We are not like Moses", therefore "We" did not have faces; I think you would agree that this would be a gross distortion of the text. I think you will agree that even though Paul said "We are not like Moses", Paul recognized that Moses and "We" shared many common characteristics, with possibly more shared characteristics than dissimilar characteristics.

If possible, we need to identify the specific characteristic(s) of Moses and "We" that Paul was contrasting in this passage. We might not agree on which specific characteristic is being contrasted, but we can at least identify which specific characteristic you believe Paul was contrasting, and which specific characteristic I think Paul was contrasting. I'll let you describe what your diagram says, and you can let me describe what my diagram says. Fair enough?

In my diagram I have linked the phrase "We are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face"(v13) with the phrase "We are all beholding with unveiled faces the glory of the Lord" v(18). The phrase "used to put a veil over his face" (which is a reference to Exodus 34:34-35) is also linked to verse 16 "but the veil is taken away whenever a person turns to the Lord" (which is also a reference to (or quote from) Exodus 34:34).

So in verses 13-16 Paul describes the actions of Moses putting the veil over his face to talk to the people while the glory faded away, and Moses removing the veil whenever he talked directly with God, (with a side-discussion about the veil over the OT).

In verse 18 Paul describes the "We" that "are beholding the glory of the Lord" who (in contrast to Moses) do not leave the presence of the Lord and put a veil over their faces.

Some characteristics shared by Moses and "We":

• seeing the glory of the Lord
• being transformed by that glory
• having faces
• other human characteristics

The specific characteristics I believe were contrasted between Moses and "We":

• wearing a veil sometimes

  in contrast to not wearing a veil

• temporary and interrupted viewing of the glory of God

  in contrast to uninterrupted viewing of the Glory of the Lord

• temporary transformation of Moses' face

  in contrast to being transformed "from glory to glory"

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The problem is that the two texts ARE NOT PARALLEL

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Paul was quite capable of building parallels that encompass more than a few verses.

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Verse 13 IS NOT talking about how Moses viewed the Lord

Verse 18 IS about how we view the Lord

 

Verse 13 IS about how Moses had to veil his face for the Israelites.

Verses 14-16 then goes on to talk about how they (the Israelites) are still veiled when viewing Moses/the OT

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Verse 13 does not stand alone in this passage. It is linked to verse 16 (by it's common source, Ex 34:34-35) which does talk about how Moses saw the Lord. Verse 13 describes what happened in between the times that Moses viewed the Lord.

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No reason to jump clear down to verse 18, when the clear contrast is in the preceding clause!

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It is possible that Paul was contrasting his boldness of speech against the un-boldness of Moses speaking. Where in this passage do you see Paul describing the un-boldness of Moses. Did Moses put the veil on his face because the glory of his face made him somehow un-bold? Was Paul claiming to be better in speech than Moses himself? I don't think such a claim would fly far among Jewish believers.

As to jumping "clear down to verse 18", I think your own diagram answers that well enough. I quote the relevent portions from your earlier post #158104 - Sun Feb 27 2005 (Highlighting is mine)

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(NOTE I've replaced some of the text with "

placeholders

" for the purposes of this discussion)

 

[...]

 

........|12Therefore, since we have such a hope,

...........^we are very bold.

 

13We are not like Moses,

..................^who would put a veil

.....................................^over his face

.....................................|to keep the Israelites

....................................................^from gazing at it

....................................................|.....^while the radiance was fading away.

....................................................|/

....................................................|/

DISCUSSION OF "VEIL" OVER OT

....................................................|/

 

17Now the Lord is the Spirit,

and where the Spirit of the Lord is,

.....^there is freedom.

 

18And we,

.......^who with unveiled faces

.......|all reflect the Lord's glory,

.......|are being transformed into his likeness

...................^with everincreasing glory,

.........................................^which comes from the Lord,

................................................................^who is the Spirit.

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Notice that in your own diagram you replaced verses 14-16 with a "placeholder" showing that verses 14-16 act as a sub-unit of verse 13. The relationship expressed in my diagam is quite similar. I didn't "skip over" the verses except to show, as you did, that they are a side-discussion. Verse 16 completes Paul's reference to Exodus 34, and verse 17 is a transition linking Paul's discussion about Moses to the present reality for believers in verse 18.

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You're asking us to believe that Paul is not contrasting himself and his associates with Moses, in the very same sentence, but rather that he is contrasting Moses with us, in a different paragraph. And, since it matters to you, this paragraph distinction can be seen in the "pre-1995" NASB.

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I think you are mistaken about it being a different paragraph. The NASB marks the begining of paragraphs with a bolded verse number (in the editions that I have). In both the 1973 print edition and in the 1995 update in digital format, verse 12 is the only bolded verse number in chapter 3, so the translators of the NASB put verses 12-18 into one paragraph. I think you are aware that the dividing points between verses and paragraphs in the New Testament are not part of the original text, but were inserted much later. Different versions of the Bible separate some paragraphs differently than others, so paragraph divisions are evidently subject to the interpretation of the translators.

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In the older NASB (pre-1995 edition) all of verse 16 is printed in upper-case letters indicating that it is a quotation from the Old Testament. Here are the two passages:

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I see. We're not to trust post-1995 scholars, but we should recognize pre-1995 scholarship.

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I think this discussion would be more profitable if you would limit your critique to what I have actually said.

The only reason I specified that it was in the pre-1995 edition was that I happened to notice that it wasn't in the 1995 update; and since you had mentioned that you were using an on-lne edition of the NASB (which would probably be the 1995 update), I thought it would be better to be specific, especially since you have been critiquing not only the content of what I write but also the form and technique.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

[there buster]

"12(T)Therefore having such a hope, (U)we use great boldness in our speech,13and are not like Moses, (V)who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. "

We use boldness [and thus] are not like Moses, who [veiled his face].

That's the sentence, the comparison, the parallel. Paul then contrasts the old and new covenants.

Verse 17 is a pretty blatant divider between the discussion in 12-16, and what follows. Any straightforward reading of the text reveals that.

"17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

It's pretty obvious, I should think, to anyone who comes to the text without trying to impose their meaning on it.

I'm done with this thread. Others can look at your diagram, and at mine, and decide which one more accurately reflects this text.

When I teach Bible study and teaching, I make it clear that no system can guarantee good interpretation.

The first requirement for any student is an honest, and a humble heart, believing that you might learn something from the encounter with the Word. God went to great trouble to give His messengers important information. It's a tragedy when we refuse to listen.

Some people don't listen because they aren't interested in learning, only in proving a point. Some people don't listen because they're afraid they might find something unsettling to their faith. Some people don't listen because they're out of the habit, or never learned in childhood.

I don't know what it is in your case, Ron. I do know that if you ever learn to listen to the text, you will be a powerful expositor.

I have two close friends who teach in the Seminary, and my own teaching experience confirms what they tell me. The biggest problem isn't teaching difficult concepts to students with little previous training; the real difficulty arises in simply getting students to actually listen to the text. To put away all their preconceptions, and study the Bible as if they might learn something.

I learned a great deal from this study, and will always be grateful for it. And now I'm moving on.