The Gifts of God

Since I'm not teaching Sunday School, I haven't updated this blog recently. I continue to read the MT and the LXX side by side. Today I read Leviticus 21, and was floored. 

Where the MT has "bread of God," the LXX consistently has "gifts of God."  This connects to Matthew 6 and 7 and shows that the bread of God brought out by the Melchizedek priest in Matt 6 was a gift, that is to say, an endowment. 

Three Times a Year

Exodus 23 has some interesting glimpses into what the religion of Israel was before the reformers got hold of it.

Exodus 23:14-17 sets out the requirement that three times a year the men of Israel went to the temple.  Even as the KJV translates it, the fact that they appear in the presence of the Lord three times a year is interesting.  But since "presence" is literally pen, "face," and "appear" could also be read "see," there's an even more provocative possibility: that three times a year, the men of Israel saw the face of the Lord.

Exodus 23:25 is also very suggestive.  To "serve" here is 'avadtem, meaning worship in liturgy, perform ordinances.  What ordinance is it?  It appears to be an ordinance in which the Lord will bless the people's bread and water (cf. Matthew 6).  The LXX here adds "wine," suggesting that the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria knew that this was a specific ordinance being referred to, and that ordinance, as they knew it, was a feast of bread and wine.

Before the Flood

I'm doing my OT reading this year out of the Hebrew and Greek versions of the OT, side by side.  This is a large undertaking for me, which involves getting up early and committing real time, but so far I'm on track.  The immediate fruit has been to see that the vocabulary in the first seven chapters of the OT is heavy in terms that have priestly and temple significance, even if that doesn't always come through in translation.  There's way too much to capture in this blog, but let me throw just out a few points:

1. The ritual actions in Genesis 3 are unmistakable, but maybe we haven't thought all the way through them.  For one thing, the garment of 'skin' in Genesis 3:21 is a garment of 'or in Hebrew, spelled 'ayin-vav-resh (the names of the three Hebrew letters in the word).  Well, 'or, spelled aleph-vav-resh, means 'light.'  These two words are pronounced identically in modern Hebrew, and have always been pronounced very similarly.  God clothes Eve and Adam in garments of light.  In verse 22, "Yahweh of the Gods" pronounces that "Man has become like one of us."
2. In the same segment, Adam is cursed that he will eat his bread by the sweat of his brow.  Eating bread and being dressed by God are both temple ritual actions, and connected in the Sermon on the Mount (more about this in the next class, for those of you who don't already know what I'm talking about).  This suggests that the curse is the sweat, not the bread part.  Similarly, it suggests that childbirth is not a curse -- the curse is the sorrow.  If anything, the implication is that childbirth, at least in some circumstances, is a sacred act.
3. Adam is commanded to 'work' ('avad in Hebrew) and 'keep' (shamar) the Garden.  These are temple-priestly verbs -- 'avad means to perform ordinances, and shamar means to keep covenants.  It is very striking, then, that the same words reappear in the story of Cain.  Cain, first of all, is given to Eve by the Lord (like Samuel and Jesus), punning on the sound of the name 'Cain' in Hebrew (Hebrew prophets, including Nephi, thrive on puns and wordplay).  In Hebrew, Cain is an 'oved of the earth -- not a 'tiller,' but a 'worker,' using the same word that means 'perform ordinances.'  Interestingly, his brother Abel is a shepherd, a common image for priests and kings.  In terms of vocabulary, the story we're told here is about a rivalry between two priests.  After Cain kills Abel, he justifies himself by asking 'am I my brother's keeper?', where 'keeper' is shomer.  Cain is an 'oved, a temple priest, but he does not shamar, keep his covenants. 
4. After this incident, God marks Cain with a 'sign' ('ot in Hebrew).  Elsewhere, the heavenly bodies are said to be or provide an 'ot.  So are the Virgin and her sons.  Here's another piece of vocabulary for understanding the Visionary Men: stars = angels = priests.  Nephi knows this vocabulary.  Cain is a priest who falls from his station, but who still should not be killed, because of his priestly status.

Keep up the study!

Divers and Strange Doctrines

The "strange doctrines" appear to be the animal sacrifices of the Jews.  Hebrews knows an altar meal participation in which requires authority, and from which the official priesthood of his day is excluded.

Wherein Was the Golden Pot

Hebrews knows that the manna was kept inside the ark (there are rabbinical sources that agree).  It also says (in the KJV) that the "shewbread" was in the second room, the Hekal, which seems to imply that the two kinds of bread were different... or else there is a contradiction.

In fact the apparent contradiction may only exist in the English translation.  The Greek of verse 2 doesn't say "the shewbread," but has he prothesis ton arton, which means "the putting forward of the loaves."  Hebrews 9:2, in other words, knows the Hekal as the room where the bread was put out (to be eaten?), but 9:4 may tell us that the same bread was kept with the throne.

The Moving Creatures that Have Life

Now we see the fowl and the whales -- creatures of the waters.  We know that the fowl are associated with the food of the shalem feast; the Father "feeds" them.  Does this mean that the whales are associated with the drink?

I Will Come Near to You in Judgment

Malachi's rebuke is addressed to a corrupt priesthood.  In addition to the moral-behavioral failings of which he accuses them, they don't bring "meat" into his house; if they did, he would open the windows of heaven to pour out a blessing on them.

It's impossible not to connect this passage with Malachi 1, where we learn that these same priests have polluted the Lord's "table" with contemptible "fruit," which is his "meat."  What is this "fruit" and "meat"?  It is "polluted bread," shrewbread not offered correctly, in accordance with the worship of the shalems.

In Remembrance of My Body

Both the bread and the wine are taken in "remembrance" of Christ.  Like Luke, therefore, 3 Nephi ties the bread and wine to the sons of Aaron and their eating of Frankincense-topped bread as a "memorial."

There Shall One Be Ordained

In blessing the sacrament, Christ tells his Nephite disciples that "one" among them will be ordained to break and bless bread.  Does this mean that the table-offering of bread in the Worship of the Shalems was the province of the high priest alone?  In Matthew 6 and 3 Nephi 13, it's Christ who performs this ordinance.  In Genesis 14, it's Melchizedek.

This Shall Ye Do in Remembrance

The echo of the Sermon at the Temple continues in 3 Nephi 18 with the sacrament of bread and wine.  Remember that Christ told his disciples that they would "minister" to others in connection with food, drink and clothing during the Sermon at the Temple.  In 3 Nephi 17 we saw angels (= priests) "minister" to the children, "encircling" (dressing) them.  Here the disciples distribute the bread and wine after Christ blesses it, an act again described as "ministering." 

1. The fact that in chapters 17 and 18 the disciples minister in the distribution of bread and wine and "angels" minister in the encircling with garments of glory ("fire") tends to support my inference that Christ's aside to his disciples in 3 Nephi 13 indicates not that only disciples are subject to the food, drink and clothing portion of the ordinance, but that they are being trained to minister in it to others.

2. This consistency strengthens my perception that we are reading in chapters 17ff a sort of repeat, or retelling, of the ordinance.

The Fruit Thereof Is Contemptible

The Sun of Righteousness has lured me down a short detour through Malachi.  The book's name is provocative: it means "my angel."  This is obviously written by visionary men following the return from Babylon -- the establishment is called "Esau" and "Edom," Jerusalem was laid waste for their sins, and though they have come back and rebuilt, the Lord is still unhappy with them.

And what does My Angel have to say to this establishment?  They have laid "polluted bread" on the altar, a clear reference to deviation from, loss or corruption of, the Worship of the Shalems, with its central sacrament of bread and wine.   Even better, Malachi says they have "polluted" the "table of the Lord" and "the fruit thereof."  This is not a different charge, but the same one repeated, and it tells us what in Plain and Precious Things I inferred by comparing Leviticus 24, Revelation 22, John 6, Luke 22, and 1 Nephi 8 -- that the bread upon the table in the temple (the "table of the Lord") was regarded as "fruit."