Thursday of Epiphany 3: Jesus, Moses, and scholarship

Opening Sentence

Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Isaiah 60:3

Commemoration: Timothy, Titus, and Silas

Just and merciful God, in every generation you raise up prophets, teachers and witnesses to summon the world to honor and praise your holy Name: We thank you for sending Timothy, Titus and Silas, whose gifts built up your Church by the power of the Holy Spirit. Grant that we too may be living stones built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Psalter: Psalm 50

Lessons: Genesis 16:15-17:14, Hebrews 10:1-10, John 5:30-47

"If you believed Moses," Jesus says to the crowd of skeptics, "you would believe me; for he wrote of me." Thus, Jesus disqualifies himself from consideration as a serious biblical scholar, for any serious biblical scholar knows that Moses wrote nothing. The books bearing his name were actually written many years later by many different writers. At least, that's what the scholars say.

Jesus, however, is a more reliable authority than any scholar. He says Moses wrote, and those writings point to him. Moreover, "if you do not believe his writings," Jesus says, "how will you believe my words?"

Scholarship is a good thing when it leads us to a deeper understanding of the Scriptures and a stronger faith to withstand the withering attacks of the unbelieving world. It is not such a good thing when it leads people away from the very One about whom those Scriptures are written and in whom they find their fulfillment. There is nothing more detrimental to Jesus' authority as the Word made flesh than the "scholarship" which does not take seriously his own claims about the Scriptures themselves. If we cannot believe Jesus when he says "Moses . . . wrote of me," how can we believe him when he says, "I and the Father are one" and "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me?" If we cannot believe what Jesus said about Moses, how can we believe what he said about himself?

(JAG)

O Word of God Incarnate