Ancient Truth: Pastoral Letters: Ancient Truth, #4

By Ed Hurst

The Bible is Ancient Truth, but must be read in its own ancient context to be fully understood. Even the people among whom Jesus lived no longer understood their own Hebrew heritage because the leadership had embraced Western intellectual assumptions which were then foreign to Scripture. Where we stand today is even more foreign. The burden of responsibility is upon us to travel back into that world, to the context in which God chose to reveal Himself. This volume examines Paul's Pastoral Letters in light of those Hebrew mental assumptions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Hurst
• Release date: Dec 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301509904

Ed Hurst

Born 18 September 1956 in Seminole, OK. Traveled a great deal in Europe with the US Army, worked a series of odd jobs, and finally in public education. Ordained to the ministry as a Baptist, then with a non-denominational endorsement. Currently semi-retired.

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Ancient Truth: Pastoral Letters

By Ed Hurst

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Ed Hurst

Copyright notice: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior – be sure your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23)

Permission is granted to copy, reproduce and distribute for non-commercial reasons, provided the book remains in its original form.

Cover art: Theriso Gorge, western Crete; Jerzy Strzelecki. Used by permission under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 – source. Modified image is available upon request from the author of this book.

Other books in this series include Ancient Truth: The Gospels and Ancient Truth: Acts by the same author.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Ancient Truth series

Introduction to the Pastoral Letters

1 Timothy

Introduction to 1 Timothy

1 Timothy 1

1 Timothy 2

1 Timothy 3

1 Timothy 4

1 Timothy 5

1 Timothy 6

2 Timothy

Introduction to 2 Timothy

2 Timothy 1

2 Timothy 2

2 Timothy 3

2 Timothy 4

Titus

Introduction to Titus

Titus 1

Titus 2

Titus 3

Philemon

Introduction to the Ancient Truth Series

Mankind is fallen, in need of redemption. The one single source is the God who created us. He has revealed Himself and His will for us, the path to redemption. The pinnacle of His efforts to reveal Himself came in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Most of us understand easily enough that Divine Son was born into a particular historical and cultural setting, one that is frankly foreign to us, and we to it. The distance is more than mere years of time, or language and culture, but a wealth of things that fall between Him and us. At a minimum, we could point out the Post-Modern culture, Victorian feminism, Enlightenment secularism, European feudalism, Germanic tribal mythology – so much we can point out without much difficulty. What no one in our Western world today seems to realize is the single greatest barrier to understanding Christ is the thing which lies under all of those obscuring layers of influence: Western Civilization itself.

That is, the ancient Classical Greco-Roman world is built essentially on Aristotle and Plato. Those two are not simply alien to the people of the Bible, but their basic view of reality is frankly hostile to that of the Bible. Aristotle rejected Hebrew Scripture because he rejected the underlying worldview of the people God used to write that Scripture.

This book is not a long academic dissertation on the differences; that has been very well covered by far better qualified writers. But this should serve as notice to the reader how our Western intellectual heritage, including our basic assumptions of how a human can know, understand, and deal with reality, is not what’s in the Bible. If you bring that Western intellectual heritage to Scripture, you will not come away with a proper understanding of God’s revelation. If the rules, the essential assumptions, by which you discern and organize truth about your world