In the example of the child not ready for the truth, God could have been silent on any subject. As Paul says all scripture is God breathed, so God could have inspired his servants to shut their mouths. Doesn't the mere mention of it then suggest not only that God wants us to think about it (even if we aren't ready to understand), but also that he has made it possible even now to know that truth?
I think that the concealed-truths (since there are no errors) must in fact be somekind of backdoor to that truth that is not obvious. In fact I might add that, couldn't it even be possible that the servant writing incorrectly might have known the error? I'm not convinced in the idea of progressive revelation, but I do believe in progressive observation. For example, can we honestly say that we understand God better than say Moses? Noah? Daniel? In fact the fact that people like them believed God who hadn't half the history and raw data that we do, must suggest that the less the had (or at least less that God inspired into writing) they must have understood to a far greater degree than most of those who read it today. So isn't it believable then that what we carelessly might label an error is in fact the writer from God trying to convey something that upfront we can't understand? Like when someone says something absurd to make a point about something true. The absurd thing he says is not the point or the truth, but it makes the true point by the process it triggers.
And no doubt a lot is also missed, creating false positives, as we stumble through translations in english. I know I almost missed something in Job a couple months back because the english reads something opposite of the Hebrew. Since then I've made it a goal to learn Hebrew in the next year. This was actually a consideration when I first started looking into the differences between the Scripture and the Word of God.
Along the way I learned an interesting little trivia. In the actual Torah, there are only nine letters of difference between any kosher scroll. That is because the yemenite israelis were seperated from the rest of the jewish authority for a time, they contain all the nine differences. All other scrolls, regardless of age are the same, letter for letter. Of those nine letters of difference, none of them change the meaning of the words their in. The difference is equatable to color/colour, honor/honour. Both mean and are pronouced the same, but the spelling is different.
The rest of the Tanakh has some, I couldn't find a number of the actual variations. There's at least four main texts...of course it wasn't one book like the Torah so the comparison is hard to make, but there are variations that change the meanings. Nothing significant, the message stays the same even if you were to omit all the variations. The New Testament has thousands of variant texts. Just some trivia, I'm not sure what it means other than that most of our time should be in the Tanakh and especially the Torah.
I have struggled with the thought of spending most o my time in Tanakh and the Torah, but It just doesn't sit right. I of course know that all scripture is God breathed and that when that was said there was only an old testament. But the new testament contains not one but four accounts of the life of our messiah. His commentary I believe is crucial to our learning if we are not to follow in the same steps as the the jews. As for the rest, revelation is the only book that says you will receive a blessing for reading, and the writings of Paul although they seem fraught with contradiction are a great example of the what we were just talking about, in that very specific truths can be found by sorting out what is said. A prime example of this process is the subject of drinking. At the church I attend now they paint a huge red line on the subject. "if you are drinking you are in sin" But God paints the difference between sin and not sinning with a much finer brush. The difference lies in the amount and the reason and the persons natural tolerance. God want's us to exercise good judgment, which can look differently depending on the person and the circumstances. But I do concede that the old testament is the foundation of our faith and that the new should only be understood in context of the old. But we can't study the old and never get to the new either.
ReplyDeleteWell said Chris
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