by chesed28
Thank you for this insightful discussion! I am seeing more in a short time that I have been a part of this group. I never saw these threads before quite like this, making the connection between the old and the new. Genesis is truly a foundational book for the rest of the Bible!
As I read these two scriptures I see how they also relate to the beginning of Genesis.
- 2Cor 4:6For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
- 1Co 10:1-4Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
- And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
- And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
- And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
Reply
Thank you for your rare encouragement. Many do not take the time to understand before they judge the hermeneutic.
You should expect that everything in the Gospels is there because the authors were testifying that Jesus fulfilled scripture, and they attempt to teach us how to read the scriptures. Many say that the exegesis of the NT authors cannot be reproduced. I suspect that when you see Christ in all the scriptures, you will see that when Jesus said that all the scriptures speak of him, he meant that they all participate in prophetic prophecy. Jump to Gen 38 and see the birth of Christ in what has been called "The Worst Chapter in the Bible"
Matthew's genealogy of Christ is not merely to establish who he was genetically. He says there are 42 generations but only lists 41. It is a riddle to push us back to the OT. The titles Only begotten Son, Unbegotten Only Son, Usurping Second Son, and Desolate Son are derived from the genealogy as the OT account is examined and a prophetic prophecy is revealed.
He says that Jesus was named Yeshua to fulfill the prophecy he would be called Emmanuel. The Greeks miss the riddle and presume that, he was called Bob because there was a prophecy that he would be called George, is close enough.
But, Yeshua in childish riddle, is a pun to "God humbled" as a reference to his incarnation and kenosis. A second riddle from the name is "God with a marriage in his heart" ... God with us.
When Jesus was found in the temple at age 12, it is prophesied in Gen 14.
The missing prophecy (according to Greeks) that he would be called a Nazarene is the prophecy hidden in the law of the Nazarite.
Some of the Greeks even mock the idea that every jot and tittle speaks of Christ. And they will never see it because they never look.
The passage you quote:
- And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
Paul is attempting to teach us that the scripture has two layers, the literal and the Spiritual. Jesus was not literally a rock. In the Spiritual layer... the mystery hidden from the beginning, he is the rock. It is a metaphor pointing to him.
The word stone אבן 'aben' is the father 'ab' אב and the son 'ben' בן. When the stone was split, it was a prophecy of the cross when the Father and Son were separated.
When Paul says that Jesus was the form of God (Ph 2:6) we lose in translation that the Hebrew word for form is צורה tsuwrah. Tsuwr is rock. (De 32:4, 2Sa 23:3) He is teaching us to read the spiritual layer.
The Greeks are constantly battling free-for-all allegory because they forgot how to read Hebrew. It is not 'spiritualizing' to read the spiritual layer. It is exegesis based in the deep rooted-ness of the Hebrew language, even to the strokes which form the letters.
The New Testament was intended to teach the Greek church how to read the OT as Jesus and the Apostles did, and to testify to them that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.