The readings today raise some interesting conversation points. In the
Old Testament reading of God's forgiving Nineveh, He is said to have
remorse. Now translations can make things difficult but can God have
remorse?
The New Testament readings are more well known but no less provocative. Christ leaves Jerusalem and goes to Galilee where he starts to recruit disciples. Who and where He recruits is significant. First, these are working men, fishermen who are actually working at the time. Two leave their father alone in the boat. Perhaps this is to emphasize the commitment and other-worldly essence of Christ's demands but these men would not be high priority recruits on many lists, especially among the Jews with a literate, educated class. One wonders what is going on here. Why these men in particular? Are these types readily accepting of abstract and esthetic teachings? Is it to emphasize that very point? Or is it the opposite, that these men are actually quite simple and direct, more likely to see the complex clearly. (I remember years ago reading an article trying to explain the failure of a complex economic plan created by two Nobel Prize winners and the writer said that the plan was very abstract but if you explained it to ten random men having a beer in a bar not one of them would have thought the plan viable.)
And where is this done? Galilee. Perhaps in allusion to the scriptural “Galilee of the Gentiles.” But "Galilee" meant "ring," or "district" and it was an international area on the trade corridors that linked the world. More, it was an area of unusually high foreigner population. So Christ turns his back on Jerusalem--the center of the Old Testament --and goes to a center of internationalism and recruits disciples from the uneducated working class.
There is a thesis there somewhere.
(For a meaning of the name Galilee, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads: Circle, Circuit; Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names has: Rolling, Revolving; and BDB Theological Dictionary: Circuit, District. More recent it is "porch" in England.)
The New Testament readings are more well known but no less provocative. Christ leaves Jerusalem and goes to Galilee where he starts to recruit disciples. Who and where He recruits is significant. First, these are working men, fishermen who are actually working at the time. Two leave their father alone in the boat. Perhaps this is to emphasize the commitment and other-worldly essence of Christ's demands but these men would not be high priority recruits on many lists, especially among the Jews with a literate, educated class. One wonders what is going on here. Why these men in particular? Are these types readily accepting of abstract and esthetic teachings? Is it to emphasize that very point? Or is it the opposite, that these men are actually quite simple and direct, more likely to see the complex clearly. (I remember years ago reading an article trying to explain the failure of a complex economic plan created by two Nobel Prize winners and the writer said that the plan was very abstract but if you explained it to ten random men having a beer in a bar not one of them would have thought the plan viable.)
And where is this done? Galilee. Perhaps in allusion to the scriptural “Galilee of the Gentiles.” But "Galilee" meant "ring," or "district" and it was an international area on the trade corridors that linked the world. More, it was an area of unusually high foreigner population. So Christ turns his back on Jerusalem--the center of the Old Testament --and goes to a center of internationalism and recruits disciples from the uneducated working class.
There is a thesis there somewhere.
(For a meaning of the name Galilee, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads: Circle, Circuit; Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names has: Rolling, Revolving; and BDB Theological Dictionary: Circuit, District. More recent it is "porch" in England.)
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