Hymn: O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Lyrics of 'O the deep, deep love of Jesus'

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore!
How He watches oer His loved ones, died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth, watcheth oer them from the throne!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best!
Tis an ocean full of blessing, tis a haven giving rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee!

The music and the lyrics match so well in this hymn. This is one of my favorite hymns. Four adjectives in the first line are used to describe Jesus' love: vast, unmeasured, boundless, and free. Furthermore, 'mighty ocean' is used as an analogy for Jesus' love. In the last line of this song, this 'mighty ocean' lifts the singer up to Jesus, who sits in his throne in the heaven.

For more background information about this song, see here.

Masoretic Text and revised translations

Today I learned a few new things about bible translation. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, who was a Jewish scribe in the 10th century, played a major role in creating a system of writing vowel sounds in Hebrew. His system is still used today. Grammatical analysis of biblical text in Hebrew became easier, or possible, by putting vowels underneath Hebrew consonants. The resulting text is called Masoretic Text, which did a good job of preserving original Hebrew text. Ben Asher family had been the major producer of Masoretic Text for many generations.

Ben Asher worked in Tiberias, which is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Tiberias (/taɪˈbɪəriəs/)

image source: Wikipedia

Masoretic Text was the basis for many revised English translations of Old Testament when scholars discovered many serious defects in the texts, which KJV used to produce its translation.

I wonder if ben Asher family had been living near the shore of Sea of Galilee in Jesus' time? Maybe there was a strong bible reading and scribing community in Galilee in Jesus' time. If so, this could provide an explanation why Jesus had been very familiar with Bible verses when he was only a kid even he apparently had not received any formal education.

However Jesus was very critical of the scribes because even though they memorized Bible text well, they did not really understand the essence of its teaching. This gives us an important lesson. Excellent academic work in Bible text criticism is important and useful but a good scholar is not necessarily a good disciple. Reading a map carefully can help us not to get lost but if we only read the map and never walk a step to start the journey, we will never discover the destination. Worse is that we may create an imagined journey filled with many unreal things. Could purgatory be one of those imagined things?

Further Reading:
Preface to the Reader of NRSV
Erasmus (I know nothing about his work but intend to read a little about him.)