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1 Peter 5:13<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n She who is in Babylon, elect together with<\/span> you,<\/span><\/em> greets you; and<\/span> so does<\/span><\/em> Mark my son.<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Truth to Learn<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n A greeting may come in many forms. The early church used a hug.<\/p>\n Behind the Words<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The word translated \u201celect together with<\/span>\u201d is suneklekt\u0113<\/span><\/em>, which is a feminine noun. It is made up of sun<\/span><\/em>, meaning \u201ctogether\u201d and a feminine form of eklektos<\/span><\/em>, meaning \u201cselected one\u201d or \u201cchosen one.\u201d The case of this noun indicates that it is the subject of the sentence.<\/p>\n \u201cGreets\u201d is from the Greek word aspadzomai<\/span><\/em>, which is made up of the particle a<\/span><\/em>, implying \u201cunion\u201d and a presumed form of spa\u014d<\/span><\/em>, meaning \u201cto draw\u201d or \u201cto pull.\u201d Hence, it literally means \u201cto pull into an embrace.\u201d This \u201chug\u201d was used as a common salutation either in greeting or bidding farewell to guests.<\/p>\n Meaning Explained<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s verse is one of those that looks innocuous enough but which has been discussed and argued over almost since the day it was written. None of these issues concern any particular doctrinal view, so they become nothing but a tempest in a teapot. Nonetheless, here\u2019s some of the discussion.<\/p>\n The verse literally reads (with the word order of the original Greek): \u201cgreets you the in Babylon together-elect one and Mark the son my.<\/span>\u201d<\/p>\n The first thing you will notice is that there is no mention of \u201cthe church\u201d at all in the original (some translations say \u201cthe church in Babylon \u2026\u201d). Hence, we get, \u201cThe together-elect one in Babylon greets you.\u201d Some have argued that Peter is referring to his own wife who is one of the elect, as are the people to whom Peter is writing this letter. Others, however, argue that it makes no sense for Peter to single out a particular woman and, since \u201cchurch\u201d is a feminine noun in Greek, he must be referring to the church which is in Babylon. We leave it to you to decide for yourself. Either way, she offers you a greeting in the form of a warm embrace.<\/p>\n The second point of contention is whether Peter is referring to the literal Babylon on the Euphrates River (in modern day Iraq) or whether he is using this as a code word for Rome itself. There was a fairly large population of converted Jews in Babylon at that time and Peter, as the apostle to the Jews, could certainly have been there. Given that there is no obvious reason that he would have been trying to conceal his presence in Rome from other Christians (if he were there), it doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense for him to use a code word. The vast majority of Biblical scholars believe that Peter was actually writing from Babylon on the Euphrates.<\/p>\n The final discussion point in this verse is over who Peter is referring to as \u201cMark my son.<\/span>\u201d Most scholars are in agreement that this is John Mark, the author of the second Gospel. It is believed that Mark wrote his Gospel account based on what was told to him by Peter. He is referred to as a son, perhaps because Peter had a significant part in Mark\u2019s conversion.<\/p>\n Application<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Regardless of what you believe about the contentious portions of this verse, it is clear that the early church considered hugging a proper way to greet and to say good-by? Hugs to you!<\/p>\n In God\u2019s service, for His glory,<\/strong><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2009 Will Krause. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n <\/span>If this message or this link was forwarded to you by a friend and you wish to receive future verses directly to your inbox, you can call the church phone \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1 Peter 5:13 She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son. Truth to Learn A greeting may come in many forms. The early church used a hug. Behind the Words The word translated \u201celect together with\u201d is suneklekt\u0113, which is a feminine noun. It is made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[197,198,199],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-babylon","tag-elect","tag-mark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5geA-cX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"signature\"](\"\/signature.gif\")
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