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.
2 Corinthians 3:1-18, Letters of recommendation and Moses' veil
Paul needs no letters of recommendation, since the Corinthians are his letter, written by the Spirit on hearts; he sets the fading glory on Moses' veiled face against the greater glory of the new covenant.
2 Corinthians 3:1-18, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul asks whether he needs letters of reference like some teachers carry, and says the believers themselves are his letter, written by God's Spirit on human hearts instead of on stone. God has made him a servant of a new covenant that gives life through the Spirit, where the written code brought death. He compares the glory on Moses' face, which Moses veiled, with the far greater and lasting glory of the Spirit's work, and says that whoever turns to the Lord has the veil lifted and is changed into his likeness.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-of-recommendation\/","n":"Letters of recommendation","s":"A traveler often carried a letter from someone his hosts trusted, vouching for him and asking them to receive him. Such letters opened homes, synagogues and churches.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/orators-and-sophists\/","n":"Orators, rhetoric and boasting","s":"Public speaking was the great skill of the Greek city. Traveling orators performed for crowds and gathered paying students, audiences judged them on voice and gesture as well as argument, and the fans of rival speakers boasted of their own man against the rest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/new-covenant\/","n":"The new covenant","s":"Jeremiah and Ezekiel promised a day when God would write his law on hearts instead of stone and put his own Spirit within his people. Some Jews of Paul's day believed the promise belonged to their own group.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/synagogue\/","n":"The synagogue","s":"The local gathering place where Jews met on the Sabbath to pray and study Scripture. It was also a community center, run by people of standing.","r":""}
Jewish travelers often carried letters so that householders would trust them with lodging, and Keener notes that "such recommendations naturally carried more weight than the person's own claims." Wright, citing the Didache, explains that churches used such letters to check that people claiming to be servants of Jesus were genuine. The rivals in Corinth carried letters of their own (the CSB Study Bible; Wright and Bird), and Carson, Moo and Morris think they called themselves apostles in the general sense of agents commissioned by others. Commending oneself was acceptable only for good reason, such as self-defense (Keener and his notes). Keener notes that many saw Moses as a divine man and suggests the rivals appealed to him. Who the rivals were is debated: Wright and Bird think Greek-speaking Jewish Christians shaped by rhetoric, the CSB Study Bible Judaizers, and Keener a dispute about models of ministry and status. Carson, Moo and Morris combine them: Jews with Sophist values, "a new kind of Judaizing" more concerned with prestige than with circumcision; they add that in the first century to Judaize meant a Gentile living like a Jew.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 2 Corinthians, Situation, and on 2 Corinthians 3:1, 3:2-3, introduction to 3:7-18, and on 3:12
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 2 Corinthians 3:1 and 3:12
- CSB Study Bible, notes on 2 Corinthians 3:1 and 11:22
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, comment on 2 Corinthians 3:1-6
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 21, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Who were the super-apostles?
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 9, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Occasion, Historical Reconstruction, with note 3, and The Character of Paul's Opponents in 1 and 2 Corinthians
