1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said unto them, These are the words which the LORD hath commanded, that ye should do them.Moses passes along a bunch of YHWH's loving commandments, such as death to the Sabbath shift, and one I hadn't heard, which was not to start a fire on the Sabbath day. Is Moses freestyling here?
2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.
3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.
4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,
5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,
6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
7 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,
9 And onyx stones, and stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate.
10 And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded;
11 The tabernacle, his tent, and his covering, his taches, and his boards, his bars, his pillars, and his sockets,
12 The ark, and the staves thereof, with the mercy seat, and the vail of the covering,
13 The table, and his staves, and all his vessels, and the shewbread,
14 The candlestick also for the light, and his furniture, and his lamps, with the oil for the light,
15 And the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in of the tabernacle,
16 The altar of burnt offering, with his brasen grate, his staves, and all his vessels, the laver and his foot,
17 The hangings of the court, his pillars, and their sockets, and the hanging for the door of the court,
18 The pins of the tabernacle, and the pins of the court, and their cords,
19 The cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office.
20 And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses.
21 And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.
22 And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold: and every man that offered offered an offering of gold unto the LORD.
23 And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and red skins of rams, and badgers' skins, brought them.
24 Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought the LORD's offering: and every man, with whom was found shittim wood for any work of the service, brought it.
25 And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.
26 And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' hair.
27 And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate;
28 And spice, and oil for the light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.
29 The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.
30 And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the LORD hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah;
31 And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship;
32 And to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
33 And in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work.
34 And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.
35 Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.
Then he shakes down everybody for their precious metals (the ones they hadn't been forced to drink) and more, and he gets help outfitting the tabernacle.
Hasn't any of this happened yet? Or has Moses been slacking on the job, not taking care of God's construction instructions while 10 chapters have ticked by? True, he's been sitting around on Mount Whatever a lot without food or drink and killing thousands of his fellow Israelites, but what kind of tabernacle-tent has he been operating in the meantime?
Presumably he already told them about the Sabbath break in Exodus 24. Should we also presume he relates the rest of the various Commandments this time around? There's no indication that he does....
Bezaleel and Aholia finally get put to cunning work. Here's hoping they don't clock in on the Sabbath.
7 comments:
So, back to the Priestly Source, specifically one of the later layers within it.
Notice the unnecessarily repetitive nature of the writing - first it lists everything ("Moses said... bring some..."), then it lists everything again ("the people brought some..."). This is one of the stylistic traits of this later writer - over the forthcoming chapters it will become a fairly recognisable characteristic.
This is one of the parts of the Bible where the Masoretic Text (which the KJV Old Testament is generally based on) begins to diverge from the Septuagint (the older version). Take a look at this link, showing the two versions side-by-side.
MT="Masoretic Text", LXX="Septuagint"
For verse 28, the following items are listed:
-incense (MT & LXX)
-anointing oil (MT & LXX)
-spice (MT ONLY)
-oil for the light (MT ONLY)
The LXX is somewhat consistent in this - it doesn't have verse 8 at all, which in the MT lists spice and oil.
The MT was compiled about 10 centuries AFTER the LXX. Basically what has happened is that at some point between the LXX and the MT, the text was doctored to be more consistent with the earlier chapters.
In verse 27, MT says "breastplate" but LXX says "oracle". In verse 7, MT again says "breastplate", but LXX says "full length robe" instead.
verse 23 lists "goats hair" and "badger skin" in the MT, but not in the LXX. MT also lists "blue" and "goats skin" as independent objects, but LXX lists "goat skin that has been dyed blue" instead. verse 7 shows similar differences.
But one of the most important differences is in verse 15-16. MT refers to the "incense altar", and its furnishings, then goes on to mention the "altar of burnt offerings" - TWO distinct altars. LXX only has "THE altar", and doesn't mention the incense altar. The key point being that the Priestly Source is many layered - the earlier layer (as seen here, in the LXX) didn't mention any incense altar, but a later writer added one to the priestly source - by creating additional parts of chapter 30 later layer added one.
There are basically 3 main layers in the Priestly Source itself. In increasing order of lateness they are:
-Original (the bulk of the Priestly Source narrative, as well as the Ethical Decalogue and Holiness Code [the latter being roughly Leviticus 17-26])
-Early Additions (like this chapter, the LXX being more reliable)
-Later Additions (like the incense altar description in Chapter 30)
Its also important to emphasise that even the "Later Additions" were still before the Priestly Source was joined with the Jahwist-Elohist text to become the first 5 or so books of the current_bible/LXX/MT.
The reason that the Sabbath gets mentioned again, is because the original Priestly Source only forbade "work", without specifying what it meant in detail. Evidently one of the later members of the "Priestly School" (the academic term used for the collection of writers responsible for the additions to the Priestly Source, and other members of the same religio-political group) had a VERY extremist interpretation of the regulation - that EVEN COLLECTING FUEL TO SURVIVE WITH was forbidden on the Sabbath.
The particular member of the Priestly School responsible for this particular version of the Sabbath regulation also exhibits a strong fondness for case-law; the law is given and then there is an example of it being practised, or vice-versa. The example of the law in practice can be found some way further into the Bible (if I remember correctly, its in the book of Numbers, where it is imposed TO THE LETTER).
(I've just noticed that I wrote "verse 7" where I should have written "verse 9")
Doesn't anyone know anything about the Basilideans? They apparently called Christ Abraxas, some word rooted in Greek where the world Abracadabra is rooted. Don't know exactly what it means....but it apparently is talking about his death and resurrection. Not sure to know if it's complimentary or not. I would say it's a crime to indicate that Christ wasn't made from flesh. War was started over that.
Does anyone know anythign about this? We were going over what other people thought about Christ in a bible study class the other night....talking about how the Greeks felt about the Lord.
In reply to anonymous,
"the LORD" is the translation of the Hebrew term "YHWH", now generally thought to have been pronounced "Yahweh". The Greeks of the 2nd century BC found Judaism, and hence YHWH, extremely fascinating; it is for this reason that the Septuagint ("the LXX") was originally commissioned - so that the Greeks could study the Bible in their own language.
As for the Greeks and Christianity, they seem to have been particularly keen on Gnostic interpretations; the parts of Greece that the Pauline epistles are addressed to were the leading centres of Gnosticism at the time (more on that when we get to the epistles in several hundred chapters' time).
Abracadabra is not a Greek word; its Aramaic, and means either "create from speech", "curse of pestilence", or "disappear like this"; the latter being the most suitable to the way it was written.
Abraxas is a Gnostic term for God - that's specifically the Monad NOT Yahweh. Most (but not all) Gnostics treated "Christ" and "Jesus" as quite independent concepts. Abraxas is nothing to do with death or resurrection; its to do with the Monad emanating 365 entities - "Abraxas" adds up to 365 in the Greek numbering system.
The Basilidians were not primarily greek, though, they were Egyptian. They, and the Carpocratians, were particularly centred in the Egyptian church (centred at Alexandria) - at one time a major branch of Christianity, although it only really survives now as the Coptic Christianity of Ethiopia.
Basilides and Carpocrates were both Egyptians. Basilides seems to have cast his gnosticism in the light of Zoroastrianism, while Carpocrates was a libertine. Fin de siecle Paris of the 19th century was nothing compared to the Carpocrations; they believed that it was a religious obligation to be debauched. The Carpocrations also believed that the Gospel of Mark says that Jesus had gay sex with the youth that was later with him semi-naked in Gethsemene, and was later hanging about in the tomb. They based this on passages in the Gospel of Mark that seem to suggest this if read literally, but also had a more spiritual deep meaning; the passages have been expurgated from almost all modern bibles, but the 3rd century Mar Saba Letter is testament to the passages originally having been there.
Most (but not all) Gnostic groups were docetics - they believed that "Christ" was a spiritual being that either possessed a human called Jesus or was able to produce the illusion of a physical body. The Gnostics also demonstrated that you can read the Pauline Epistles in a way that clearly advocates this view (and the Pauline Epistles certainly use a very large number of specifically gnostic terms like Pluroma, and Aeon, for example - although these are usually lost in translation). At one point, when Marcion was alive, there were nearly as many Gnostics as non-Gnostics.
War was started by the people who said that Jesus WAS made from flesh. Study the Albigensian Crusade.
But more on Jesus in 2000 chapters time, not now, please. Its not contextual to Exodus 36.
I would like to make another appeal for an increase in pace. At the current pace of 1 chapter a week it will take over 22 years to complete this - and over 25 years if your version of the King James Version is a full version.
The next 5 chapters are nearly identical word-for-word, in the KJV, to those about 5-10 chapters ago, and there really isn't any reason for it to take more than a month to cover them - it could be done in a single posting.
Hi, My first read of this blog. I have just had a multi-houred long discussion with literal bible belivers. Thank you for writing this.
Welcome, Tzu!
Post a Comment