{"id":32547,"date":"2015-02-17T07:55:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T12:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=32547"},"modified":"2015-02-16T08:13:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T13:13:05","slug":"new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/02\/new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-8\/","title":{"rendered":"New Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson #8"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scriptures-resurrection-758817-print\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the plan: each week that the gospels are covered in Sunday School, I will post\u00a0one question from my book along with a brief discussion of the issues that it raises.<\/em><\/p>\n

Salt (Matthew 5:13) had many uses in the ancient world:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1) an addition to sacrifices (see Leviticus 2:13)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(2) a symbol of the covenant (see Numbers 18:19)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(3) a purifier (see 2 Kings 2:19\u201323)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(4) a condiment (see Job 6:6)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(5) a preservative<\/strong><\/p>\n

(6) a necessity<\/strong><\/p>\n

(7) a sign of loyalty<\/strong><\/p>\n

(8) a sign of friendship (see Mark 9:50)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(9) in Jewish tradition, it was associated with wisdom<\/strong><\/p>\n

(10) in Greek tradition, it was thought to be loved by the gods<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0For how many of the above uses can you find symbolic meaning in verse 13? (See also D & C 101:38\u201339.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(adapted from Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This may seem an obscure detail upon which to focus an entire post, but I do it to make two larger points: first, their world is not our world.\u00a0I suspect if you polled most westerners and asked them what they associated salt with, they’d probably tell you poor eating habits or tasty french fries.\u00a0This is the distance which must be bridged when we read the scriptures. We must always be aware of this difference. It makes me a little nervous when teachers ask something like “And what do you associate salt with?” because that may not map very well onto what Jesus and his audience (and Matthew and his audience) associated salt with. So, please, no free association in Sunday School. Fortunately, it\u00a0is actually easier for us to be aware of the contextual meaning of symbols\u00a0than it was for past generations: for a quick-and-dirty intro to symbolism, you could do a search on “salt” in the Hebrew Bible, read the verses that pop\u00a0up,\u00a0see what salt was\u00a0associated with in its biblical usage, and go from there. (This isn’t perfect because it runs the risk that the word you search\u00a0is not translating the same Hebrew term\u00a0each time, but it’s a start.)<\/p>\n

Second, I think one of the worst habits\u00a0that we have as scripture readers is to be content with one answer. We should always push ourselves to keep thinking about possible additional layers of meaning. Perhaps the best question you can ask as a teacher is not “What could this mean?” but “And what else could this mean?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32547"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32777,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32547\/revisions\/32777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}