Article May 11, 1940 Issue

Bible Notes

[The Biblical citations given in the Christian Science Quarterly are from the Authorized King James Version. The Bible Notes in this column can be used, if deemed necessary, to elucidate some of the words or passages contained in the Bible Lessons.]

"Gird up the loins of your mind" (I Pet. 1:13)—In various Bible passages the girding up of the loins, in a literal sense, is referred to, this being an act which was done in preparation for active motion. For an Easterner to run in his long, flowing robes was next to impossible, unless he girt up his loins. Thus Elijah "girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab" (I Kings 18:46). So, when the expression is used metaphorically in I Peter, one might render freely: "Prepare yourselves for mental activity."

"Be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you" (I Pet. 1:13)—While "be sober" is a literal translation of the Greek verb, it may be noted that it was a term which was often employed to mean "be temperate" in the wider sense of that term, in the sense of to be "calm or undisturbed" in one's thinking; while the adverb which is rendered "to the end," had the literal meaning of "completely" or "perfectly." Good-speed renders the complete verse as follows: "Therefore, prepare your minds for action, and with perfect calmness fix your hopes on the mercy that you are to experience when Jesus Christ is revealed."

"Your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers" (I Pet. 1:18)—In this passage, as in so many New Testament verses, the Greek word rendered "conversation" has no reference to "conversation" in its modern sense of "talk," but means rather "manner of life" or "way of living." Thus Weymouth (Fifth Edition) suggests: "the futile habits of life inherited from your forefathers." The Twentieth Century New Testament renders: "the aimless way of living which was handed down to you from your ancestors."

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