A part of me is OK with taking the slow route (though this would be a very very slow route). It's not all that bad of an aim, to try to get through a small section a day. I would have a nice 10-year plan. On the other hand, the other part of me wonders how long it will take before I get tired of it and stop (and that usually happens, because I'm very good at getting really gung-ho about something and then losing interest after a few months).
One more thing... if I wanted to buy the whole Bible for Everyone set in one swoop (a 35-volume set), it would cost me a total of $450. 😲 Or, I could just get a book at a time, which would be less burdensome. I think this book series actually might be a pretty good volume to put in my library, so I'm not opposed to starting a collection, as long as it doesn't go out of print in 10 years. In the meantime, we'll see how long it takes before I lose interest. It'll be a shocker if I last the 10 years. For now, I'll just take it a day at a time.
* + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
The reading for today comes from Acts 2:5-13, which is somewhat like "Part II" of the account of what happened when the Holy Spirit came down like a violent wind. I wrote in a footnote yesterday that the people speaking in tongues thing reminded me of the Tower of Babel story (CC: Gen 11:1-9; "Babel" means "confusion" ¹), where God scattered the people and confused them with different languages. I remember there was a parallel between this and the Pentecost story, where the opposite occurs - God in a sense unites the people together by some work of a supernatural universal translator.
We're all pretty familiar with this story of how people in their pride wanted to be like God and build a tower to heaven, so God cursed them with different languages so they couldn't understand each other. At this level, then, we can see how this Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative is coming through in the Acts reading (God now doing the work of redeeming by uniting people in their languages, so that we can be restored to our created nature and created purpose).
When I read the Tower of Babel story again, though, and look at the commentary footnotes, some more interesting things arise which might shed deeper light into the aforementioned narrative.
The first thing that stood out to me was the following: "This narrative (from the non-Priestly or J source) revisits the theme of preservation of the divine-human boundary."² This boundary also is noted as having been asserted in Gen 3:22-24, when Adam & Eve ate the fruit to be like God; and in Gen 6:1-4, when God gives humans a mortal life-span. I think this is worth noting because something significant happens with this boundary when the Holy Spirit (God) comes down to dwell in human beings. I'm not sure what else to say here other than that it's worth noting that God's boundaries have been re-drawn somehow because of what Jesus had done.
The second thing that stood out to me was Gen 11:4, which talks about the humans who build the tower to "make a name" for themselves, so that they would not be scattered across the earth. The commentary here says that following:
The humans are depicted as fearful of being scattered and thus aiming to make a name for themselves through a tower reaching into heaven. The humans' intention here to stay together contradicts the divine imperative to "fill the earth" now found in Priestly traditions (1.28; 9.1,7).³This is significant, because it helps to reinforce this great theme we see emerging in the New Testament of "filling the earth." I see this as an imperative of cosmopolitanism (I'm not sure if this is the right word to use, but I can call it "the imperative of the worldwide-ness of the kingdom of God."). Included in this, then, is that what was for the Jews is for all the world - God's intentions are meant to be extended to all people everywhere. We see this as well with the Great Commission of Jesus, to "go make disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:19). So at Babel, God divides the people so that they would "be fruitful and multiply" and "fill the earth." He does this as a curse, so people would be compelled to do what God wants. At Pentecost in Acts, however, God through Jesus undoes the curse, and restores and unites them through a blessing and a gift. With this gift, they as agents of renewal can be empowered to fill the earth in this new, redeemed way, in order to help bring about what God had intended all along.
Now, Luke is implying, with the day of Pentecost this curse is itself overturned; in other words, God is dramatically signalling that his promises to Abraham are being fulfilled, and the whole human race is going to be addressed with the good news of what has happened in and through Jesus.⁴
So I think that's it for tonight. A few interesting insights gathered once again from the footnotes of the study Bible. As usual these posts are taking me several hours to get through. I am trying to take the positive perspective and count these are worth my time, though (rather than not worth my time and procrastinating from what I should be doing). True, I do enjoy it; but also true, there's a part of me that thinks in the long run this regularity will be worth it. There's also the skeptic part of me that considers this just another thing that will die away in a few months. We'll see what happens.
--------
(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha. Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 26 Hebrew Bible.
(2) Ibid 25 Hebrew Bible.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 29.
No comments:
Post a Comment