Post by Questor on Jun 30, 2014 21:28:41 GMT -8
While doing a study on the word faith, I noted that the word itself has different meanings in the Scriptures, depending on what is being discussed. In the Tanakh, faith is mostly a matter of doing what you said you would do...keep the covenant that you agreed to.
But in the Brit Chadashah, it is sometimes discussing a sense of trust in Yehoshua, and what He did; and remaining within the New Covenant as a form of belief.
This troubles me, since the focus has changed from faithfulness to the Mosaic Covenant to faith as a type of religion, or as a belief in and trust of Yehoshua.
Why the changes of what faith means...in a Bible translated from Hebrew, not Greek, where the difference is even more profound? And how are we to use the word as we go forward?
1 Chronicles 5:25 (CJB)
25 But they broke faith with the God of their ancestors and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed ahead of them.
Nehemiah 1:8-10 (CJB)
8 Remember, please, the word you gave through your servant Moshe, ‘If you break faith, I will scatter you among the peoples;
9 but if you return to me, observe my mitzvot and obey them, then, even if your scattered ones are in the most distant part of heaven, nevertheless, I will collect them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen for bearing my name.’
10 Now these are your servants, your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and strong hand.
Isaiah 26:2-3 (CJB)
2 Open the gates! Let the righteous nation enter, a nation that keeps faith!
3 “A person whose desire rests on you you preserve in perfect peace, because he trusts in you.
Daniel 9:7-9 (CJB)
7 “To you, Adonai, belongs righteousness; but to us today belongs
— to us, the men of Y’hudah, the inhabitants of Yerushalayim and all Isra’el, including those nearby and those far away, throughout all the countries where you have driven them; because they broke faith with you.
8 Yes, Adonai, falls on us, our kings, our leaders and our ancestors; because we sinned against you.
9 It is for Adonai our God to show compassion and forgiveness, because we rebelled against him.
Matthew 17:17-20 (NKJV)
17 Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me."
18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"
20 So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.
Mark 14:26-27 (CJB)
26 After singing the Hallel, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
27 Yeshua said to them, “You will all lose faith in me, for the Tanakh says, ‘I will strike the shepherd dead, and the sheep will be scattered.’
Luke 18:7-8 (CJB)
7 Now won’t God grant justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Is he delaying long over them?
8 I tell you that he will judge in their favor, and quickly! But when the Son of Man comes, will he find this trust on the earth at all?” Acts 6:7 (CJB)
7 So the word of God continued to spread. The number of talmidim in Yerushalayim increased rapidly, and a large crowd of cohanim were becoming obedient to the faith.
Acts 14:8-10 (CJB)
8 There was a man living in Lystra who could not use his feet — crippled from birth, he had never walked.
9 This man listened to Sha’ul speaking. Sha’ul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed,
10 said with a loud voice, “Stand up on your feet!” He jumped up and began to walk.
1 Corinthians 12:6-10 (CJB)
6 And there are different modes of working, but it is the same God working them all in everyone.
7 Moreover, to each person is given the particular manifestation of the Spirit that will be for the common good.
8 To one, through the Spirit, is given a word of wisdom; to another, a word of knowledge, in accordance with the same Spirit;
9 to another, faith, by the same Spirit; and to another, gifts of healing, by the one Spirit;
10 to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the ability to judge between spirits; to another, the ability to speak in different kinds of tongues; and to yet another,the ability to interpret tongues.
1 Corinthians 15:13-14 (NKJV)
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.
14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.
1 Timothy 3:8-9 (NKJV)
8 Likewise deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money,
9 holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.
James 2:14-23 (CJB)
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but has no actions to prove it? Is such faith able to save him?
15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food,
16 and someone says to him, “Shalom! Keep warm and eat hearty!” without giving him what he needs, what good does it do?
17 Thus, faith by itself, unaccompanied by actions, is dead.
18 But someone will say that you have faith and I have actions. Show me this faith of yours without the actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions!
19 You believe that “God is one”? Good for you! The demons believe it too — the thought makes them shudder with fear!
20 But, foolish fellow, do you want to be shown that such faith apart from actions is barren?
21 Wasn’t Avraham avinu declared righteous because of actions when he offered up his son Yitz’chak on the altar?
22 You see that his faith worked with his actions; by the actions the faith was made complete;
23 and the passage of the Tanakh was fulfilled which says, “Avraham had faith in God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness.” He was even called God’s friend.
2 Peter 1:5-7 (NKJV)
5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
But in the Brit Chadashah, it is sometimes discussing a sense of trust in Yehoshua, and what He did; and remaining within the New Covenant as a form of belief.
This troubles me, since the focus has changed from faithfulness to the Mosaic Covenant to faith as a type of religion, or as a belief in and trust of Yehoshua.
Why the changes of what faith means...in a Bible translated from Hebrew, not Greek, where the difference is even more profound? And how are we to use the word as we go forward?
1 Chronicles 5:25 (CJB)
25 But they broke faith with the God of their ancestors and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed ahead of them.
Nehemiah 1:8-10 (CJB)
8 Remember, please, the word you gave through your servant Moshe, ‘If you break faith, I will scatter you among the peoples;
9 but if you return to me, observe my mitzvot and obey them, then, even if your scattered ones are in the most distant part of heaven, nevertheless, I will collect them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen for bearing my name.’
10 Now these are your servants, your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and strong hand.
Isaiah 26:2-3 (CJB)
2 Open the gates! Let the righteous nation enter, a nation that keeps faith!
3 “A person whose desire rests on you you preserve in perfect peace, because he trusts in you.
Daniel 9:7-9 (CJB)
7 “To you, Adonai, belongs righteousness; but to us today belongs
— to us, the men of Y’hudah, the inhabitants of Yerushalayim and all Isra’el, including those nearby and those far away, throughout all the countries where you have driven them; because they broke faith with you. 8 Yes, Adonai,
falls on us, our kings, our leaders and our ancestors; because we sinned against you. 9 It is for Adonai our God to show compassion and forgiveness, because we rebelled against him.
Matthew 17:17-20 (NKJV)
17 Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me."
18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"
20 So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.
Mark 14:26-27 (CJB)
26 After singing the Hallel, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
27 Yeshua said to them, “You will all lose faith in me, for the Tanakh says, ‘I will strike the shepherd dead, and the sheep will be scattered.’
Luke 18:7-8 (CJB)
7 Now won’t God grant justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Is he delaying long over them?
8 I tell you that he will judge in their favor, and quickly! But when the Son of Man comes, will he find this trust on the earth at all?” Acts 6:7 (CJB)
7 So the word of God continued to spread. The number of talmidim in Yerushalayim increased rapidly, and a large crowd of cohanim were becoming obedient to the faith.
Acts 14:8-10 (CJB)
8 There was a man living in Lystra who could not use his feet — crippled from birth, he had never walked.
9 This man listened to Sha’ul speaking. Sha’ul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed,
10 said with a loud voice, “Stand up on your feet!” He jumped up and began to walk.
1 Corinthians 12:6-10 (CJB)
6 And there are different modes of working, but it is the same God working them all in everyone.
7 Moreover, to each person is given the particular manifestation of the Spirit that will be for the common good.
8 To one, through the Spirit, is given a word of wisdom; to another, a word of knowledge, in accordance with the same Spirit;
9 to another, faith, by the same Spirit; and to another, gifts of healing, by the one Spirit;
10 to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the ability to judge between spirits; to another, the ability to speak in different kinds of tongues; and to yet another,the ability to interpret tongues.
1 Corinthians 15:13-14 (NKJV)
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.
14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.
1 Timothy 3:8-9 (NKJV)
8 Likewise deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money,
9 holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.
James 2:14-23 (CJB)
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but has no actions to prove it? Is such faith able to save him?
15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food,
16 and someone says to him, “Shalom! Keep warm and eat hearty!” without giving him what he needs, what good does it do?
17 Thus, faith by itself, unaccompanied by actions, is dead.
18 But someone will say that you have faith and I have actions. Show me this faith of yours without the actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions!
19 You believe that “God is one”? Good for you! The demons believe it too — the thought makes them shudder with fear!
20 But, foolish fellow, do you want to be shown that such faith apart from actions is barren?
21 Wasn’t Avraham avinu declared righteous because of actions when he offered up his son Yitz’chak on the altar?
22 You see that his faith worked with his actions; by the actions the faith was made complete;
23 and the passage of the Tanakh was fulfilled which says, “Avraham had faith in God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness.” He was even called God’s friend.
2 Peter 1:5-7 (NKJV)
5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
- there are 70 faces to 
C
); anyhow, I recall several places I read that there was (probably) a book of Enoch long ago, but it is long since lost to us. It would most likely have been available to early writers of the TNK, but not to us. What we have now has been scholastically debunked as a forgery- a pseudepigraphical writing. Now, aren't you impressed I remembered that? (Actually, I had to keep typing different versions into the Farflex Dictionary until it occurred to me that- duh- it was in the post I referenced, and all I had to do was read ... 
). Anyhow:
... I have read the book of Enoch n find it to not leave me at peace. Its true 66 books are more than enough. We are blessed with a beautiful puzzle to enjoy of His majestic work. 
