Today is St. John Chrysostom's feast day. Those of you who follow The Journey (our weekly Bible study) know that he's one of the Church fathers that pops up very regularly in our exploration of how the fathers interpreted Scripture. One of the reasons why there are a few names that keep coming up (his, St. Augustine, etc.) is that they are the Church fathers who preached a lot of sermons (which we still have) that get into interpreting specific biblical texts. Yes, even back then, pastors would get the idea to preach through a particular book in the Bible (the lectionary was not really a universal thing yet).
As some of you already know, soon I will begin a series I will call, "Meet the Parents" in which I will introduce you to the Church fathers (and mothers) one at a time, in chronological order. This will be a podcast, posted only to our Locals community (though I will use it to prepare for future episodes of the Way of the Fathers Podcast on XM Radio). But Meet the Parents will be just for our Locals community. In any case, I will eventually get around to an episode on St. John Chrysostom.
Until then, here's a little teaser. The "name" Chrysostom is not really his last name. It's a nickname, really, and it means "golden mouth" - because he had a reputation as a great preacher. He originally wanted to be a monk, but he ended up getting ordained a deacon, and then a priest, and for a while he was a priest in the city of Antioch, in Syria. Later he became the bishop of Constantinople. Everywhere he went, people either loved him or hated him. If you leaned toward the very strictest side of Christianity, you probably loved him. And in spite of the fact that he was a strong proponent of celibacy and monasticism, in his role as a pastor in Antioch he became a great advocate for marriage and family. But he ran into trouble in Constantinople when he openly criticized the empress for her sins (to be fair, her sins were equally public). In any case, it led to him being persecuted, and he eventually died as a result of this persecution. So the Church considers him a martyr, even though the government was supposedly Christian by this time.
As a biblical interpreter, he tends to favor the more historical interpretations, which makes sense given his connection with Antioch (as opposed to someone like the Alexandrian Origen, who always leans into the non-literal interpretations).
Today, one of the things I'll be working on is our Journey session for Saturday, and I already know Chrysostom's name is bound to come up. I've asked him to pray for me as I work on my notes. I hope you'll join me on Saturday.
Please feel free to post anything you might know about Chrysostom or like about him.
I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:
This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App
Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.
Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.
Enjoy!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
Here is the list of Bible versions I tell my students are UNACCEPTABLE for serious study of the Scriptures and the Early Church - for the most part it's always because these versions of English translations fail my test passages in serious ways - this is a quote from my syllabi:
[Note: The REB, CEB, GNT, KJV/New KJV, and NIV/New NIV versions are NOT adequate translations for the study of Scripture or early Christianity.]
I'd be happy to hear if anyone wants to try to change my mind on any of these, but note that I do not allow (and am constantly fighting against) the ever-popular NIV (which I call the Not Inspired Version).
Next up, I'll re-post a couple of my older videos on this topic...
Here's Matt Walsh's take on it - he says what I'm thinking...
if you watch this, I'd love to hear your thoughts
So here are the verses I look at to check whether a Bible translation is a good one:
These are mostly in the NT, but with regard to the OT, I don't want a Bible to minimize the phrase "Son of Man" so for me a Bible cannot render "son of man" or even "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13 as something like "human being" - that's a paraphrase and while it may convey the correct meaning for SOME OT passages, it does not convey the correct meaning for all of them, and you lose the connection to Jesus' own self-identification as the Son of Man in the NT, especially in Matthew 16:13-15.
Matthew 6:7 - better not say "vain repetition" or imply that repeated prayers are bad - Jesus was criticizing going on and on extemporaneously, not memorized prayers. The word "vain" is nowhere in the Greek!
1 Cor 11:2, and 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6 - better not render the word "teachings" just to avoid the positive connotation for tradition(s), especially if Col 2:8, which has a negative connotation (human traditions) is...
