Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Advice from 'Peter'

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
(1 Peter 2:12)
Read this the week before last, but didn't blog about it, because it was part of a listening-to-God thing I was doing with the people from Retro and Baptist church in Pleasant Street, because they're starting to consider new directions. We weren't supposed to talk about what God might have been showing us during the two weeks of listening, so we wouldn't influence each other. Patrick asked me to take part in it because I was involved with Retro a bit, earlier in the year.

Anyway, I found this advice from 'Peter' (it's not likely that the Apostle Peter actually wrote 1 Peter, because it quotes the Septuagint rather than the Tanakh) helpful in dealing with Centrelink and the uni stuffing me around with admin stuff, and them saying that all the problems I was having with them were my fault (some of them most likley are). The most important thing wasn't actually getting them to admit they'd made mistakes. It was more important for me to be patient and treat them with respect.

4 comments:

Tab said...

Its possible that Peter didn't write 1 Peter, but it seems more than likely that he DID.

Some of the arguments for him writing it are that ideas and phraseology are consistant with Luke's record of Peter's seroms and speaking in Acts (which was written BEFORE 1 Peter,) And "allusions to Jesus saying and deeds as recorded in teh Gospels come from stories in which Peter placed a special part, or from sayings in which Peter would have particular interest". (Gundry)

Early Church tradition also attriubute the work to Peter - it is unlikely they would do so if it were his not work, given his position in the early church.

Liberal theologians seems to delight in saying "so and so didn't write this book" (just as they claim Jesus didn't rise from the dead)but in this case Peter has a strong claim for autorship - just as he does for the book of Mark.

Also there is no reason why Peter wouldn't have wused the Septugant - it's more than likely that he could read and speak in Greek - he came from a well to do fishing family,and in those days Jewish boys were well educated in such things. Greek was the Lingua franca of the time, the launguage also of the septugant, which would be the version of the scriptures his readers may well have used (he was writing to mostly gentiles, not those in Jerusalem, or even Israel)

Glad ur looking @ all this stuff Chris, it's good.

Christop said...

Can you add that info to the Wikipedia article?

Tab said...

Hasn't thought of that.

Tab said...

Oh! Had a friend here who has had a bad run with Centrelink over the years, and had to go to sort out somethign taht happened to her husband's payment yesterday and she was not happy! I shared ur experiance and that verse with her. She laughted and said she probabbly needed that!