Piety & Religion

[Falco Knotwise]

My Strong’s Concordance at home has the exact same word and definition as the one given by the website I quoted.

The word for alms in Matthew 6:1 is indeed elehmosunh which means “compassion” according to Strong’s Concordance. There was no mistake made by the website I quoted, unless the Concordance I have at home made the same one.

Anyone who wants to can check it for themselves.

I stand by what I said.

[Falco Knotwise]

Never mind.

I have now seen that both translations are found on the web. I do not understand it. Here’s another where the original word for alms in Matthew 6:1 is given as ἐλεημοσύνην meaning “compassionateness”

https://www.quotescosmos.com/bible/bibl ... w-6-1.html

I will say that in my home Concordance the word ἐλεημοσύνην (compassion) is used. Look up righteousness in the Concordance and you will see the word does not appear in Matthew 6:1 in the home Concordance.

Commentaries say it was a Jewish custom to refer to alms as the practice of “righteousness.” I hypothesize this is why it is translated that way in the text.

Regardless, whether the word is righteousness or compassion, I myself am unsure where the teaching came from that alms, prayer and fasting are regarded as the three pillars of piety. The word for “piety” does not appear in the text so far as I can tell, and I could find no reference to “the three pillars of piety” in official Catholic sources like the Catholic encyclopedia, Thomas Aquinas or Augustine.

I am saying nothing about whether it is right or wrong, only that I simply cannot tell exactly where it came from or what it means without a source.

You are all welcome to form your own opinions, of course.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

On the other hand, I’m not an expert here, just a learner. Maybe you know more about it than I do. Do you have a source for it or is there maybe an Anabaptist tradition relevant here that I’d be unaware of?

This is just my interpretation. Jesus addresses social shalom (our relationships with others, "justice") in the first part of the Sermon on the Mount (chapter 5), then goes on to spiritual shalom (our relationships with God, "piety") in the beginning of chapter 6, before going on to personal shalom (our relationship with our own heart, and to a large extent, our attachment to the material world, "righteousness") on the latter half of ch 6 and first half of ch 7.

Jesus addresses piety elsewhere, but mostly in polemics against the Pharisees (he even uses them heavily as negative examples in Matthew 6). The sermon on the Mount is some of his only real, direct teaching to his disciples on the practices of piety.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

I see I've caused some confusion by referring to the opening of Matthew chapter 6 as the "three pillars of piety". This made it sound way more attached to an authoritative tradition than it really is.

"Piety" refers to religious/spiritual lifestyles or practices. As far as I know, there isn't really a dedicated Koine Greek word that fits this purpose. It has a Latin route, coming from a word meaning "duties" to refer to "religious duties". The alms giving, praying, and fasting that Jesus addresses are clearly in this category, as evidenced by the "privacy" Jesus commands with them, and in contrast to the forest of his sermon.

The phrase in Matt 6:1 is sometimes translated "practice your righteousness" but the phrase is nearly identical to that in verse 2 and 3, translated "give to the poor". The phrase seems to just mean "do almsgiving" or "perform charity".

The translators who translate it as "righteousness" or "piety" instead of "almsgiving" are making an interpretive decision to regard verse 1 as an introductory verse to the whole section on the three practices outlined by Jesus (almsgivin, praying, fasting). A more literal translation might admit that he's just talking about the first of these three, perhaps focusing on this first one in a repetitive manner because it naturally flows from what he was talking about in chapter 5 (loving your enemies, being perfect).

My observation that these three practices are practices of piety doesn't come from the text, but from the fact that they are, categorically, practices of piety, and Jesus talks about them in a systematic teaching manner. I don't know why he talks about these three in particular, but because he does, I (I, not any other tradition I'm aware of) consider them to be important practices of piety for followers of Jesus. Other practices of piety (Bible study, singing hymns, listening to sermons) can be valuable, but I think the three practices Jesus goes over here should be a bit more central to the life of a Christian, because Jesus addresses them directly to his disciples in a teaching context.

[Bootstrap]

My Strong’s Concordance at home has the exact same word and definition as the one given by the website I quoted.

The word for alms in Matthew 6:1 is indeed elehmosunh which means “compassion” according to Strong’s Concordance. There was no mistake made by the website I quoted, unless the Concordance I have at home made the same one.

Anyone who wants to can check it for themselves.

I stand by what I said.

I guess the concordance you have at home made the same mistake then - perhaps this mistake was also in the original Strong's Concordance and people have simply copied it over? Can you find this same answer if you use a source that is not based on Strong's? I bet you can't.

I did check it for myself. I can read Greek. Anyone who can read Greek can simply read the verses, this is not a hard question. It's not the same word at all. There are other people on MennoNet who can read Greek, I'm sure they can confirm this if they choose to weigh in.

I think I have a way to show you this. I will provide the original and an SBL transliteration for each of the two verses, highlighting the words we are talking about.

Matthew 6:1 Προσέχετε δὲ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ὑμῶν μὴ ποιεῖν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων πρὸς τὸ θεαθῆναι αὐτοῖς· εἰ δὲ μή γε, μισθὸν οὐκ ἔχετε παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ ὑμῶν τῷ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
Prosechete de tēn dikaiosynēn hymōn mē poiein emprosthen tōn anthrōpōn pros to theathēnai autois; ei de mē ge, misthon ouk echete para tō patri hymōn tō en tois ouranois.

Matthew 6:2 Ὅταν οὖν ποιῇς ἐλεημοσύνην, μὴ σαλπίσῃς ἔμπροσθέν σου, ὥσπερ οἱ ὑποκριταὶ ποιοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς καὶ ἐν ταῖς ῥύμαις, ὅπως δοξασθῶσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀπέχουσιν τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν.
Hotan oun poieis eleēmosynēn, mē salpisēs emprosthen sou, hōsper hoi hupokritai poiousin en tais synagōgais kai en tais rymais, hopōs doxasthōsin hupo tōn anthrōpōn; amēn legō hymin, apechousin ton misthon autōn.

[Bootstrap]

Ah, I forgot to think about textual variants! Sorry, Strong's is not wrong here, it is simply based on a different Greek text. I was using a text based on earlier manuscripts, Strong's is based on the Greek text used for the King James. Most modern translations would use a different Greek text here ...

Sorry, I should have thought of that possibility.

For anyone who knows what I'm talking about here, see below.

https://www.greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm

[Falco Knotwise]

Alright, I can understand that well enough. Thanks, I appreciate responses from you and P&T and I’ve learned some new interesting connections that I hadn’t known of before, which does make it all that more interesting. When will I get around to posting about it? That’s another question. Could be a day or two, could be a week or two. I’ve got a tough schedule right now, but I do hope to get around to it soon, so stay tuned.

[Falco Knotwise]

So, picking up where we left off, we were discussing the three pillars of piety and how I didn’t know a thing about it really. Great questions by P&T and Bootstrap! Had me really flummoxed so I had to look into it.

Well, I found a source that has helped put the question into some biblical context and explains it in a way that made a lot of sense to me.

So my source is a Catholic scholar named Brant Pitre. He takes what I think are some very complex issues and speaks about them in a way that even I can understand, so I really like him! All I’m really going to do here is lay out what he said.

So, to understand what are sometimes called the three pillars of piety (or of Lent) from within a biblical context we begin at the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:6 New International Version (NIV)

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

The three basic temptations or lusts to which Eve succumbs are shown here. The Bible says the fruit appeared to Eve as being . . .

1. good for food

2. pleasing to the eye

3. desirable for gaining wisdom (“your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods”)

These are the three temptations of the fall, and they correspond to the three concupiscences (or lusts) as described in 1 John 2:15 as . . .

1. Lust of the flesh (pleasure)

2. Lust of the eyes (the desire for possession of what one “sees”.)

3. Pride of life (fleshly wisdom, vanity, self-love)

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. — 1 John 2:15-16

Basically they are the disordered desires we all have for “pleasures, possessions and pride,” which are also sometimes known as the desires for “money, sex and power.” (I think St. Augustine calls pride of life simply “worldly ambition.”)

So, the three “pillars of piety” are biblical antidotes or remedies to these three lusts caused by the fall.

1. Fasting helps to overcome our disordered attachment to physical pleasure (food)

2. Giving alms helps to overcome our disordered attachment to possessions. (Instead of taking something we’re giving something away.)

3. Prayer helps to overcome our (disordered attachment to?) self-love, our vanity.

Prayer helps to put in place of pride the growing virtue of humility, a gift of heaven, by submitting to God’s will, looking for HIS kingdom, and giving him glory.

So these 3 spiritual disciplines are at the essence of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. They help us to overcome the “triple concupiscences” — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Brant Pitre also explains that what Jesus is doing in the temptations in the desert is undoing the temptations of the fall.

So, there in a brief summary is what he teaches far better than I can.

I’m hoping to get his book Introduction to the Spiritual Life soon, and try to gradually integrate these principles into my own very poor spiritual life.

https://catholicproductions.com/collect ... ets?page=2