My friend, an avid reader, accepts everything
she reads at face value. At the opposite end of the spectrum I recently did an
interview with another woman, also an avid reader, who questions everything she reads. I’m sorry to say that
in the majority of the churches I’ve visited, most worshippers are like my
friend — they accept everything they hear and take it at face value. It’s not unusual
for me to attend a church and be the only one in the room with a Bible verifying
the Scripture that is being used. Granted, some worshippers may go home and
examine the Scripture more closely. However, I have to believe that if every
person in the auditorium turned the pages of their Bible and followed along
with the preacher as he gave his sermon the quality of sermons would greatly improve.
Paul certainly found himself under such scrutiny, “Now the Bereans were of more
noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with
great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said
was true” (Acts 17:11).
2 comments:
Gail;
-----Thanks for the tip. You don’t know how helpful this was to me. You see, “Berean” isn’t found in common dictionaries. Occasionally I have need for this word “Berean” for the same reason you do, that is, its allusion to checking out what you hear. The “o” in “Beroea” has always tripped me up. It seems proper to me that it should also be present in “Berean.” We don’t go “Amercan” for folks living in America; so why go “Berean” for those of Beroea? Then, every time I want to spell “Berean”, I have to look the word up because it just doesn’t make sense to me. And I’ve learned by now not to even try my digital dictionary. It isn’t there. Moreover, I have to dig through boxes and piles of old printer cartridges to get to my paper dictionary. And I hate that thing. Inevitably the first, second, and third things I find out about the word I’m looking up in it is that it isn’t on any of those three pages I first turned to. The fourth thing I discover is that the darned “o” has tripped me up again and I have to go through three more pages earlier in the alphabet to finally learn the only additional piece of knowledge I didn’t have before I started was that the closest word to “Berean” in this dictionary is “bereave”. Well, that’s fitting!
-----No wonder I skip all that process when I need to spell “Berean”! Instead, I kick up my Quickverse and search my trusty digi-Bible, because I “know” the word is there! But you know, it isn’t. And I’ve learned that eventually, too. It’s always frustrated me so much because my memory wants to tell me the word is in this verse you quoted. But my learning contradicts my memory. So when I saw your quote with my mystery word present, I decided I was going to be either Berean or Beroean and finally put this puppy to bed for the whole night.
-----Funny thing is, at that verse, something I never noticed, having never investigated why the search engine never found my word, the RSV says “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.” I suspected a textual discrepancy might be at play in this verse (we don’t like to say “error”.) Consulting Bruce Metzger’s textual commentary shows a discrepancy at the end of the verse, not at the beginning. The Western text adds an expansion the other texts lack, which is “as Paul was proclaiming.”
-----So, at the beginning of this verse the Greek truly has only a pronoun reflective of the synagogue occupants of Beroea mentioned in the preceding verse. Your translation fleshed out that pronoun with “Berean”; the RSV fleshed it out with “these Jews”.
-----Finally, I learned that my example for the proper spelling of “Berean” is at Acts 20:4 in the New Century Version (think I’ll remember that?)
-----Now is all that Berean of me, or is that Beroean of me, or what!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Steve,
So glad to help:)
Gail
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