{"id":22438,"date":"2014-03-24T08:44:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T12:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=22438"},"modified":"2014-03-24T08:44:36","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T12:44:36","slug":"the-bible-the-veil-and-the-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-the-veil-and-the-spirit.html","title":{"rendered":"The Bible, the Veil, and the Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Mention was made in a Facebook conversation I had recently of Paul\u2019s reference (2 Cor. 3) to the Scriptures being read while veiled. Many refer to it as though it were about the inability of people to understand Scripture without supernatural assistance.<\/p>\n<p>But it doesn\u2019t mean that, despite what is so often claimed. It is echoing the story of Moses\u2019 face being veiled after he spoke with God face to face, to hide from people that the glory faded with time. This is then applied figuratively to the reading of the Jewish Scriptures, with Paul asserting that its readers in his time fail to realize that it too has a less than permanent glory.<\/p>\n<p>And so, ironically, this text is an example of how those who insist that you cannot understand Scripture without the help of the Spirit, presumably have the Spirit, and yet even so misunderstand the Scriptures.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-22459\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/03\/Behind-the-Veil.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mention was made in a Facebook conversation I had recently of Paul\u2019s reference (2 Cor. 3) to the Scriptures being read while veiled. Many refer to it as though it were about the inability of people to understand Scripture without supernatural assistance. But it doesn\u2019t mean that, despite what is so often claimed. It is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":22459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,71],"tags":[224,5309,7721,8815,11708,13112,13321],"class_list":["post-22438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-corinthians","category-paul-and-his-letters","tag-2-corinthians","tag-interpretation","tag-moses","tag-paul","tag-spirit","tag-understanding","tag-veil"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Bible, the Veil, and the Spirit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mention was made in a Facebook conversation I had recently of Paul&#039;s reference (2 Cor. 3) to the Scriptures being read while veiled. Many refer to it as\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-the-veil-and-the-spirit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bible, the Veil, and the Spirit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mention was made in a Facebook conversation I had recently of Paul&#039;s reference (2 Cor. 3) to the Scriptures being read while veiled. Many refer to it as\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-the-veil-and-the-spirit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-03-24T12:44:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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