Deuteronomy 34:1-12

I may have mentioned once or twice that Deuteronomy was written around the same time Jeremiah was written. As we see in verse 5 here, it was most likely not written by Moses as some traditions state. It would indeed be a miracle that he could write of his own death. At the time this was written, authorship was not such a big deal. Later, as logic and evidence became things, leaders started making claims about facts and assembling the stories and calling them the Torah. Verses like this remained problematic and led to modern scholarship on just where these books came from.

Rob Bell, in his 2017 book, What Is the Bible, says when they talk about his "vigor" here, they are saying he was still able to bear children. That kind of thing was pretty important at the time. Building your tribe was a primary concern. Regardless of when it was actually written, this is a timeless story of the death of great leadership. This usually leads to turmoil, and maybe that's the lesson the authors were trying to convey, that we need to get back to those roots of wisdom and fundamental truths that built the nation we currently enjoy. Just what those fundamentals are however remains debatable.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18

Leviticus is full of rules. Many of them have nothing to do with modern life and actually reflect ignorance and prejudice. But the Lectionary spares us that for today and gives us the early version of the Golden Rule. By "early", I don't mean unique or original, just early for this collection of scripture. There are hundreds of versions of this rule originating from most of the civilized nations of history.

Note the context here about economic justice and equality. "Neighbor" is not well defined and may be referring only to kin, but clearly, at least within the tribe, you don't give special favors to people just because they can do something for you. That includes not exploiting someone's physical labor.

As I'm sure you know, and as you see in this week's Matthew passage, Jesus repeats this sentiment. In Luke we get the Samaritan story along with it. That story, like Leviticus, shows the tension of safety coming from excluding others and not touching the unclean alongside the security that comes from including others and welcoming them and expanding your circle of love by caring for others. We see this today as the same countries that are rescuing refugees as they wash up on their shores are also voting to restrict immigration and release themselves from long held unions and treaties.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

We continue with this early letter from Paul and hear echoes from Deuteronomy about the word of God. The part about not exploiting will come a little later in 4:1-8, close to the passage we'll see in a couple weeks.

Paul alludes to trouble these congregants had with sharing their message. That's a little hard to relate to in a free country, although you might have experienced it on a personal level. We can all however relate to being confident about whatever it is we know and being brave enough to speak up about it even if there are those around us who don't agree. Paul warns against doing that deceitfully or to flatter ourselves or seek praise. Rather we should take care with those who think differently and bring them over to our way of thinking only as much as they are willing.

His exact meaning may have gotten lost in translation. Bart Ehrman tells me this passage contains one of those interpretations that turns on a single letter. The Vanderbilt translation uses "gentle" from the Greek hPIOI, while others use "infants" NhPIOI. Paul uses the "infants" words elsewhere, but always with a negative connotation, as in immature. He doesn't use "gentle" elsewhere, but it seems to fit a little better, although Paul has been known to mix a metaphor, so just because we think it makes more sense, that doesn't mean it was what Paul was thinking. A scribe might have wanted to "correct" it, and indeed, early manuscripts use NhPIOI. For Ehrman, the clincher is an article by Abraham Malherbe that shows the image of a "gentle nurse" was commonly used when speaking of an authority figure gently guiding his listeners.

This may seem like a ridiculous thing to quibble over, but it's what scholars do. It's what pastors base their sermons on, sometimes without knowing it. We are handed down these texts from some time in the third century, and we know they were changed from when they were originally written. I don't quite understand how they know, but they say this was originally written about 50 AD. Our earliest actual copy is from around 200 AD. It's unlikely that Paul's complete thoughts survived that many years of transcription.

Matthew 22:34-46

Jesus has past some tough rhetorical tests in the last few passages. This section ends with a direct question about the greatest law. This is a more normal interaction between listeners and a teacher and the answer is pretty standard, right from the OT as we saw above.

According to scholars, that I'm not qualified to challenge, the context of the OT use of "neighbor" indicates a tribal affiliation, in this case, other Jews. We live in a modern world where we interact with people around the globe and, hopefully, we have expanded that sense of neighborliness. Dan Barker, one of the founders of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, likes to point out this translation and claim that it is what Jesus meant too. But whoever wrote this was centuries removed from Leviticus and in very different circumstances. We don't get the expanded explanation of the Samaritan parable like we do in Luke, but I think there is context here to indicate a different meaning.

At least with the word "love", we can look at the Greek and see there are different words used. This one is "agape". Agape love is active. It is loving-kindness, showing mercy and generosity. It is not just a feeling but something chosen, something you do. This isn't the type of love you feel when you gaze into someone's eyes and get tingly feelings and forget about the entire rest of the world. This is altruism. It's just as natural as any other biological urge.