Basil the Great, On the Spirit 14.33: Faith In Moses (Exodus 14:31) as a Type of Faith in Christ

  

But also, faith in Moses does not show that faith in the Spirit is of little value. Rather, according to their line of thought, it belittles the confession in the God of all. For, “the people,” Scripture says, “believed God and Moses his servant” (Ex 14:31). Now he is associated with God, not with the Spirit, and he was the type not of the Spirit, but of Christ. He, then, through himself prefigured the “mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2:5) in the ministry of the Law. Moses, in mediating the things of God to the people, was not a type of the Spirit. For the Law was given “arranged by angels, in the hand of a mediator”—obviously Moses (Gal 3:19), and this at the behest of the people who said, “You speak to us; let God not speak to us” (Ex 20:19). And so faith in him refers to the Lord, the mediator between God and men, who said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me” (Jn 5:46).

 

Is, then, faith in the Lord a small thing, since it was prefigured through Moses? Likewise, if someone is baptized into Moses, the grace of the Holy Spirit at baptism is no small thing. And yet I have to say that it is customary for the Scriptures to say “Moses and the Law.” For example, “they have Moses and the Prophets” (Lk 16:29). So, then, when Paul said, “They were baptized into Moses,” he spoke of the baptism of the Law (1 Cor 10:2). Why, then, do they show the “boasting of our hope” (Heb 3:6) and the rich gift of our God and Savior who through regeneration makes us new and young again like the eagle—why do they show these to be contemptible by disparaging the truth on account of its shadow and its types?

 

It is the mark of an infantile mind and of a child who truly needs milk to be ignorant of the great mystery of our salvation, that, according to the elementary manner of teaching, we were introduced to training for perfection in piety and were instructed in knowledge first in matters easy to grasp and proportionate to us. He who directed us, as if we were eyes kept in darkness, led us up to the great light of truth accustoming us to it little by little. For by the sparing of our weakness, in the depth of the richness of his wisdom and in the unsearchable judgments of his intelligence he showed a guidance gentle and accommodating to us: he first trained us to see the shadows of bodies and to look at the sun in water, so that we not be blinded by wrecking ourselves on the vision of pure light.

 

According to the same logic, the Law, “being a shadow of things to come” (Heb 10:1), and the prefiguring of the Prophets, a reflection of the truth, are intended as a school for the eyes of the heart, so that the change from these things to the wisdom hidden in mystery will be easy for us.

 

So much, then, concerning types. We cannot linger further on this topic, or the tangent would be many times longer than the main subject. (Basil the Great, On the Spirit 14.33 in  On the Holy Spirit [trans. Stephen Hildebrand; Popular Patristics Series 42; Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011], 64-66)

 

Sara Japhet and J. A. Thompson on 2 Chronicles 20:20

  

And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets (בִנְבִיאָיו/ἐν προφήτῃ αὐτοῦ) so shall ye prosper.

 

 

It has been long recognized that the king’s exhortation is based on the words of Isaiah to Ahaz in Isa. 7:9: ‘If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.’ And yet there are several differences between the two utterances. Isaiah’s demand for complete faith is phrased as a warning, with a negative condition: ‘If you will not believe …’. Here, there is a positive admonition: ‘Believe … and you will be established.’ Isaiah’s brief statement is elaborated into a two-colon parallel passage, in which the play on the root ’mn is continued in ‘believe in (NEB) his prophets’, and climaxes with ‘you will succeed’. Most important of all is this addition of faith in the prophets to trust in God; while strictly related to the context, it nevertheless reflects a major tenet of the Chronicler’s attitude towards prophecy: the prophets themselves are objects of faith. (Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary [The Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993], 797, emphasis in bold added)

 

 

The exhortation to “have faith” uses another form of the same verb (ʾmn) meaning “you will be upheld” in v. 20. The “prophets” (v. 20) could be the earlier prophets, whose writings already had become canonical, but probably it refers to the more immediate prophecy of Jahaziel.  (J. A. Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles [The New American Commentary 9; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994], 294-95, emphasis in bold added)

 

Robert F. Smith on Bethabara/Bethebara

  

BETHABARA / BETHEBARA

 

Biblical place-name, Place beyond the Jordan River whereat LEHI prophesies that a prophet would baptize the coming MESSIAH with water (1 Nephi 10:9 || KJV John 1:28 || JST John 1:34). O & P mss read Bethebara; but 1830 Bethabara, which Skousen prefers.

 

Scholars agree that בית עברה BETHABARA means “House of the Ford, Place of Crossing Over” in Hebrew (2 Samuel 19:19; cf. Judges 7:24), of which Greek Βηθαβαρᾷ “Bethabara” is the standard transliteration, and which is used at John 1:28 by the KJV. However, at John 1:28, most early Greek manuscripts read Βηθανίᾳ “Bethany” (preferred by RSV). Even though they were aware of this strong manuscript evidence for “Bethany,” the early Church Fathers, Origen and John Chrysostom, preferred the minority reading BETHABARA primarily because they knew of no Bethany “Poor-House” near the Jordan River. Moreover, Origen liked the etymology of BETHABARA because it was more edifying. However, aside from BETHABARA being attested at John 1:28 in Greek uncial codices New York and Moscow (K & T), corrected forms of Ephraemi and Athos (C & Ψ), along with uncial fragments from St Petersburg and Paris (083, 0141), minuscule 1, and family 13, backed up by Eusebius and Cyril, and some Byzantine texts and lectionaries, as well as the Old Curetonian Syriac, some Sahidic Coptic, Aramaic of the Peshitta (בתברא ), Armenian, and Georgian manuscripts. The place itself is attested in both the 5th century AD Madeba Map and in the Jewish Talmud. Thus, the Book of Mormon provides strong evidence for the reading preferred by the early Church Fathers. Moreover, the earliest Book of Mormon spelling, BETHEBARA, is attested at John 1:28 in manuscripts 13 and 828 as Βηθεβαρᾷ, and may therefore reflect the best reading at 1 Nephi 10:9 and John 1:28. (Robert F. Smith, The Ethnological Foundations of the Book of Mormon, 3 vols. [Provo, Utah: Deep Forest Green Books, 2025], 3:70-71)

 

R. C. H. Lenski on Hebrews 10:14

  

The best grammatical note on this present participle is that found in Moulton, Einleitung 206, which places the tense of τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους in relation to the tense of τετελείωκεν (we have the same construction in 2:11): what is a completed fact for Christ in regard to us is in progressing relation to us, the objects concerned. If no relation of tense is intended, why did the writer not use a noun, say τοὺς ἁγίους or some other? We also note that the perfect used in v. 10, “we have been sanctified,” is now repeated, but it is not restricted to “we” (writer and readers) but includes all who at any time experience the sanctifying power of Christ’s completed offering and its completed effect on them. (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Epistle of James [Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1938], 337-38)

 

Further Reading:

 

Refuting Tony Brown on the theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews

Jerry Grover on the Tower of Babel

 

251013 BOM Insights into the tower of Babel

David G. Firth on Psalm 110:4

  

Much speculation surrounds the figure of Melchizedek (which reaches back to ancient times, as evidenced by 11QMelch), but the point here seems to be that the king will join Melchizedek in being a priest-king. This was not the standard pattern in Israel, though there are points where the possibility exists, such as 2 Samuel 8:18, which notes that David’s sons were priests. As priest-king, there is no sense that the king supplants the Aaronic priests in the temple but rather in his reign takes a role in representing the people before God. Following the oracle, we move again to a prophetic figure who explores the significance of the vow. The king is promised that the Lord (here, mt’s pointing makes clear that ‘Lord’ means Yahweh, not the king) is at his right hand. Since the right hand is a metaphor of honour there is no conflict with verse 1 (the change of preposition is also significant), and the point here is that Yahweh stands with the king in times of conflict. Psalm 2:2 anticipated kings resistant to Yahweh’s reign through his king, and here it is made clear that Yahweh defeated them on the day of his wrath (cf. Ps. 2:5). The crushing of enemy kings in the past provides assurance to the king that Yahweh’s oath can be trusted.  (David G. Firth, Psalms [Apollos Old Testament Commentary 14; London: Apollos, 2025], 604)

 

Kevin L. Barney on the Source of the Quotation in 1 Corinthians 2:9

  

Paul quotes a scripture, but despite a superficial resemblance to Isaiah 64:4, the quotation itself is not in the OT as we now have it. The early Church Father Origen (Commentary on Matthew 27:9), claimed it was from the Apocalypse of Elijah, a book we no longer have. Jerome agreed with this (Epistle 101 to Pammachius, and Commentary on Isaiah, vol. 17). There is an Apocalypse of Elijah of Egyptian origin that was first translated from Coptic in modern times by G. Steindorff in 1899 (see “Apocalypse of Elijah” Introduction, by O. S. Wintermute, in Charlesworth, James H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. I (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1983). This pseudepigraphon, which contains many messianic references and may date from early Christian times is not complete in its modern form, and there is also a Hebrew version which is somewhat different than the Coptic version, but less complete. So whether Paul’s quotation is from a missing portion of one of these two books, or from an unknown version is not known. (Kevin L. Barney, “The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians,” in Footnotes to the New Testament for Latter-day Saints, ed. Kevin L. Barney, 2 vols. [2007], 2:61 n. e)