Being foreign to this World - book of 1 Peter

screenshot from BibleGateway.com

Lots of wondering points came up in the weekly Bible reading of 1 Peter’s 2nd chapter. The list of bad behavior springing from who you are deep down reads like the reverse of “fruits of the spirit” that grow from seeking God’s Way. The NIV lists these terrible things as …” rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” And the Hawai’ian Pidgin verse gives …”No do no bad kine stuffs. No bulai nobody. No say one ting an do anodda. No get jealous. No talk stink notting.” Still another voice (E. Peterson’s The Message), …”Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk..” here is the link to those comparative verses at BibleGateway dotcom.

Since Peter’s letter is addressing house-churches far from Jerusalem with mixed congregations of Jews and Gentiles, perhaps some of those attending were in the habit of sorting their peers into who is more holy or righteous or closer to God than the others; for example, would it not be natural to project onto the Jews a bit more affinity to the legacies of Rabbi Jesus? How is this human habit addressed in the followers of The Way?

In languages spoken and written today, often there is a distinction between spoken and written version of the language, since the voice, face, and context all contribute to conversational interchange, but only punctuation marks and word order can speak on the written page. So the many iterations of Bible verses and also the letters circulated to early churches would have been the stiff style of written, not spoken teachings, right? And when the Greek source texts later went into Latin or all the vernacular languages, then this formal style was conserved, right? But to have lived in the presence and preaching, teaching, healing and blessing of Jesus or his nearest contemporaries and companions would have been all in the spoken voice; not the thundering cadences of KJV, for instance - beauteous though it was frames in the early 1600s. How ever could one go about reconstituting the conversational style of the teachings, parables, etc?