Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
1 Peter 2:1-10, Living stones and a royal priesthood
Like newborn babies the readers should crave pure milk. Coming to Christ, the living stone rejected by people but chosen by God, they are being built into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood; Peter strings together Scripture's stone texts and calls them a chosen people, a royal priesthood and a holy nation.
1 Peter 2:1-10, in every translation this tool compares.
Peter urges his readers to put away malice and deceit and to hunger for spiritual nourishment like infants. He gathers several Old Testament texts about a stone to describe Christ as the rejected stone God has made the cornerstone, and believers as living stones built into a new temple and priesthood. Then he gives his readers titles once given to Israel, a chosen people and holy nation, who were once no people and now belong to God.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/temple-and-courts\/","n":"The temple and its courts","s":"Herod's huge rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, believed to be God's dwelling, laid out in courts that kept Gentiles, women and Jewish men at set distances.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sacrifice-and-blood\/","n":"Sacrifice and the daily offering","s":"Animals were offered at the temple for sin, for thanks and for cleansing, and blood sealed covenants. Every day a lamb was offered at dawn and again in the afternoon, and Jews everywhere prayed at those hours.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/jewish-ways-of-reading-scripture\/","n":"How Jews read Scripture","s":"By the first century Jews held a known body of sacred writings, roughly the Old Testament, to be God's true word. They taught it to children from infancy, read it aloud in the synagogue and explained it, and Greek-speaking Jews called it the sacred writings.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/passover-pilgrims\/","n":"Passover and the pilgrim crowds","s":"The spring festival that retold God's rescue of Israel from Egypt. Jerusalem filled with pilgrims, and hopes of freedom ran high.","r":""}
The Qumran community also saw itself as a living temple and applied Isaiah 28:16 to its own leaders; philosophers and Jews alike spoke of spiritual sacrifices (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). House could mean a building such as the temple or a household such as the house of Israel, and Peter plays on both (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Peter joins Isaiah 28:16, Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 8:14 by their shared word stone, the method Jewish teachers called gezerah shavah (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Wright's commentary adds a Hebrew wordplay: stone is eben and son is ben, which Jesus seems to have used when his parable about a son ended on the rejected stone (Mark 12:1-12). Psalm 118 was sung in the Passover season, and some Jews described the deliverance from Egypt as a call from darkness into light (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). About half of 2:9 quotes Exodus 19:6, which gives all believers, Gentiles included, a share in God's covenant with Israel (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes), and Carson, Moo and Morris observe that, unlike Paul in Romans 9-11, Peter shows no struggle over Israel's place.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 1 Peter 2:4-12, and on 1 Peter 2:2, 2:3, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7-8, 2:9 and 2:10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 1 Peter 2:2, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7-8, 2:9 and 2:10
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 19, Peter, Author and The Contribution of 1 Peter
- N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, comment on 1 Peter 2:4-10
