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Welcome to Day 1396 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – New Testament Letters and Cosmic Geography – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1396 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did, and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.


Mastering The Bible – New Testament Letters and Cosmic GeographyInsight Sixty-Seven: Epistles are LettersThe word “epistle” comes from the Greek word epistole, which means “letter.” We typically associate that word with personal correspondence, but a “letter” might refer to all sorts of documents (commercial, legal, governmental, etc.).


The letters we see in the New Testament are both personal and formal. On the one hand, the writers have a personal attachment to the recipients. Paul, for instance, wrote letters to churches he had founded. Peter and James wrote more general letters to groups of believers who were under persecution. Given the fact that some New Testament letters were aimed at audiences scattered about and not in one location (James 1:1) or were shared with other churches (Colossians 4:16), New Testament letters also had a formal feel to them. Their content was considered essential for believers who had not been the initial addressees.


In our age of instant and scattershot communication, the art of letter writing has mostly been lost. A good letter has discernible components and structure. I can remember learning how to write a letter in grade school. My teacher taught us that letters began with a salutation (Dear…). Instead of getting right to the point, our salutation was supposed to be followed by some sort of light banter to set the right tone, hopefully. We might want to include a preview of what the letter was ultimately about. Then came the body of the letter, whose coherence was fostered or undermined by clear or confused paragraphing. When we were bringing things to a close, we were taught to leave the reader a final reminder so that the main purpose of the letter wouldn’t get lost. Then we closed with “Sincerely” if formal or “Love” if appropriate and signed our names.


New Testament letters also followed patterns. Most of Paul’s letters open with a personal salutation, greeting, and blessing or note of thanksgiving. Here is an example from I Corinthians 1:1-4 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+corinthians+1%3A1-4&version=NLT) :


Greetings from Paul


This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Sosthenes.


I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.


May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give...