Daily Office Progress Report

 Fourth Thursday after Pentecost

Ordinary Time--Color: Green

Lectionary texts:

Thursday

1 Samuel 18:6-30

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 

Friday:

I Samuel 19

2 Corinthians 7:2-16

 

Note on 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1: Many, perhaps the majority of scholars, consider this passage to be an intrusion into 2 Cor. by an author other than Paul. It interrupts the very positive context of what goes before and comes after with a negative warning about not marrying unbelievers. This is contradictory to what Paul says in 1 Cor. 7.  The light-darkness dualism in 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 is uncharacteristic of Paul. The name Beliar is not found anywhere else in the letters of Paul, although it is commonly used as the name for the devil in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as is the light-darkness motif. The vocabulary is distinctively different from Paul's, with 7 words that occur nowhere else in the NT and 13 words that occur nowhere else in the letters of Paul. Both the ideas and the vocabulary of these verses have much more in common with the Dead Sea Scrolls than Paul. My theory is that the passage was written by an ex-member of the Dead Sea community who became a Christian. In the copying of 2 Cor., this sheet of papyrus accidentally was stacked in with the sheets of 2 Cor. and then was copied by a later scribe. That copy was then recopied, and so on down the transmission process.

My work on the Daily Office Project this week hasn't gotten far. I'm finding surprisingly few verses from the early Psalms that fit our liturgical purpose. An exception would be Psalm 4:8: 

             I will lie down and sleep in peace;

                  for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

This verse would be a beautiful beginning for the brief service of Compline, the last service of the day, prayers before going to bed.

I have a particular fondness for Psalm 42, which I have quoted in the blog before. In v. 4 the Psalmist is remembering with joy how he used to lead the procession into the Temple for worship:

             These things I remember, as I pour out my soul;

                  how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God,

             with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,

                  a multitude making festival.

This might make a good verse for Morning Prayer on Mondays. 

I know this doesn't seem like much, but it's a start.

Our daughter April is flying in tomorrow morning for Father's Day weekend. It will be the first time we have seen her in over a year, because of Covid. I'll be taking the weekend off from the blog. It will return Monday with another travelogue. 

Holy Spirit, who inspired the Psalms,

We give thanks for the beauty of these words and the faithfulness of those who wrote them. Help us as we use them to draw ever closer to you, O Lord.  Amen.

Faithfully

Christian