soldiers of mystery and the meditation!!!

But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory--- Paul (1cor 2:7)

I'm trying to understand what it means to have no idea what I am talking about.

I read that the word for mystery here (musterion) for the pagans meant a hidden truth for the initiated. It literally comes from the word for wink. It was also translated into Latin as the word sacramentum (where we get our word for sacrament). In Classical Latin, this word originally meant a military oath, although the commentators I read didn't think that reading had anything to do with the biblical text.

But what if it did, I mean, it's bad exegesis to pick meanings for a world out of a dictionary like a buffet, but what if you translated the text,

But we speak God's wisdom in a sacramental/mysterious military oath, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory

I don't think it would detract from the text to assume the early roman writers had this in mind when they translated Paul's letter. I mean, one could make a case that they conceived of their lives in Christ as,

1. the just alligience of a warrior to his Lord
2. and a mystery; something you couldn't understand by assuming the text was telling you to be a soldier. That was the crusader's error and it's way to easy. The answer's in the Bible are rarely that simply. In some mystical way you fight for Christ. If anything the next verse only confirms this. Paul says that if the rulers of this world knew this mystery, they wouldn't have killed Christ!!! Knowing the mystery of God and violence are too completely different and foreign ideas, but that does not mean that in some cosmic way, Christian mystery involves fighting something.

I think it has something to do with fighting our human understanding. More on that tomorrow, stay tuned!!!!

by the way, bible study is on, in two days, 2nd peter and 1st 3 chapters of Genesis are all fair game for art. bring some good stuff!!!!

Daniel