How Ancient Peoples saw SCRIPTURE - Fr Stephen De Young

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm early in learning the tradition in Holy Orthodoxy. Does Proverbs 1:5 for attains wise counsel refer to saints, not just a spiritual father for proper discernment and guidance, especially when reading scripture?

[00:00:17]Well, let me pull up Proverbs 1.

[00:00:21]The Proverbs Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.

[00:00:26]Uh let's do like the verse before and after.

[00:00:29]Uh to impart shrewdness to the morally naive, a discerning plan to the young person. Let the wise also hear and gain instruction, and let the discerning acquire guidance. To discern the meaning of a proverb and a parable, the sayings of the wise and their riddles. And the question was, is that referring to the saints or something like a spiritual father?

[00:00:54]Yeah, so in this case it's describing the purpose of the text being compiled.

[00:01:03]Right? Is that the text itself would serve as as wise counsel.

[00:01:10]Um but but right? Uh you have to understand how the the text was understood.

[00:01:20]Right? So, and it's not the way we as modern people understand texts, right?

[00:01:26]So, >> Moderns.

[00:01:28]putting something in writing was essentially making a monument of it.

[00:01:32]Because it was so expensive and difficult and costly to put something in writing, and then to pass it down and copy it and preserve it that way.

[00:01:41]So, every text is a literary monument in the ancient world. That's why the phrase it is written in the new has such like weight to it.

[00:01:51]>> Weight. Like, yeah, I wrote down my grocery list, too, right? It's not the same, >> [laughter] >> um the fact that so that there's a reason why it's not just a custom.

[00:02:09]That when you get for example the first century even in the pages of the New Testament the Psalms get referred to as David.

[00:02:16]And the Torah gets referred to as Moses and Proverbs and other wisdom literature gets referred to as Solomon. Even though if you read Proverbs Solomon didn't write all of it. Like there are other listed authors of other parts of it right? It's referred to as Solomon.

[00:02:32]They understood that through the text you're coming into contact with the person.

[00:02:40]So that studying and meditating on the Torah is like receiving Moses' counsel.

[00:02:49]Right? Or studying the book of Proverbs is receiving Solomon's counsel.

[00:02:57]Right? Or David in the Psalms.

[00:03:01]Right? And that idea of course has been lost with modern Protestant views of scripture where it's just all God talking directly.

[00:03:13]You know and the human author kind of gets cut out.

[00:03:17]You know. Or at least greatly minimized.

[00:03:21]Right? Because they're they're going to argue that God is even picking the exact words right? That are going to be used like the human author has no which fails to explain the reality of the text in a lot of cases but the but that idea to minimize the human author whereas despite having a very hot no one would argue that in the first century the Jewish people in general let's take Christianity out of it right? No one's going to argue the Pharisees had a low view of the Torah.

[00:03:55]>> [snorts] [laughter] >> That's Okay.

[00:03:58]>> built a they built a fence around it.

[00:03:59]They loved it so much.

[00:04:01]>> [laughter] >> Right. It's like they definitely had a high view of the Torah.

[00:04:04]But that did not involve in any way cutting Moses out of the picture.

[00:04:09]Quite the opposite.

[00:04:12]Right? The value of the Torah and their high view of the Torah corresponded to a very high view of Moses and his authority as one of the holy ones of old.

[00:04:22]Right?

[00:04:24]And so, that's why, you know, Saint Jude only wrote a paragraph and we know very little about him otherwise.

[00:04:32]But he's definitely Saint Jude.

[00:04:35]Because he wrote scripture.

[00:04:37]>> [laughter] >> That's that's part of that. So, right, it's sort of the the opposite effect.

[00:04:43]So, it is sort of talking about Solomon, the idea of sainthood, the idea of patron patron or saint's patronage.

[00:04:53]That is kind of involved similar ideas are kind of involved.

[00:04:58]Right? Even though the direct reference there is to the to the Book of Proverbs itself.