Be-reshith bara Elohim eth ha-shamayim we-eth ha-arets: (2) we-ha-arets hayethah tohuwa-bohu we-choshekh al-pnê tehôm we-rûach Elohim merachepheth al-pnê ha-mayim.
In beginning Gods (he) created the heavens and the Earth. But the Earth was laid waste and made desolate, and destruction turned on the abyss.
Previously on God, They/He created the Universe and the Earth. Then something happened that really pissed God off, and he laid waste to the Earth and destroyed it in Divine judgement.
When they start one of those shows, like "LOST", "HOUSE", or "HEROES", they start with..."Previously on..."But they don't show you everything that has happened since the show started...there isn't enough time...they only show you a few key scenes that deal directly with the show you're about to see...make sure you're up to speed...that's Genesis 1:1-2 in a nutshell...
How long ago did He make it all? It doesn't say...how did He make it? Doesn't say...How long was it between when He made it, and when He trashed the Earth? Doesn't say...What happened before the Earth got trashed? Doesn't say...How long was the Earth like that before He started over on it in verse 3?...Doesn't...you get the idea...God never painted Himself into any corners...especially about time...Bishop Usher did, but not God...
So, basically He starts off with...Previously on God...
More to come...have a good night...
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
GENESIS CHAPTER 1:1 and 2 part 2
Be-reshith bara Elohim eth ha-shamayim we-eth ha-arets: (2) we-ha-arets hayethah tohuwa-bohu we-choshekh al-pnê tehôm we-rûach Elohim merachepheth al-pnê ha-mayim.
In beginning Gods (he) created the heavens and the Earth. But the Earth was laid waste and made desolate, and destruction turned on the abyss.
Something I want you to think about, while I'm cooking Dog Food with my wife, and helping my son with his homework...why didn't I put "the" in my translation of the first verse?
Because it's not there in the Hebrew... ha-shamayim= the heavens...ha-arets= the earth...be-reshith=in beginning...if the writer(GOD) had intended it to say "In the beginning" it would read...Ba-reshith...be-reshith, in its construct here, is not used like this anywhere else in the Old Testament...be=in...reshith=first...perhaps Be-reshith is an idiom?
Ponder that for awhile...I'll be back when I'm done...
It's late...I'm tired...still have a lot to do...we'll pick this up tomorrow...hopefully, before the Laker game...just remember, God is a really great writer...best I've ever read...he phrases things a certain way for a reason...people always seem to want to help Him out...explain away his grammar, etc...He doesn't need the help...
Anyway, I'll give you a hint on the idiom...think of how they start each episode(after the first one) on LOST or HEROES...
In beginning Gods (he) created the heavens and the Earth. But the Earth was laid waste and made desolate, and destruction turned on the abyss.
Something I want you to think about, while I'm cooking Dog Food with my wife, and helping my son with his homework...why didn't I put "the" in my translation of the first verse?
Because it's not there in the Hebrew... ha-shamayim= the heavens...ha-arets= the earth...be-reshith=in beginning...if the writer(GOD) had intended it to say "In the beginning" it would read...Ba-reshith...be-reshith, in its construct here, is not used like this anywhere else in the Old Testament...be=in...reshith=first...perhaps Be-reshith is an idiom?
Ponder that for awhile...I'll be back when I'm done...
It's late...I'm tired...still have a lot to do...we'll pick this up tomorrow...hopefully, before the Laker game...just remember, God is a really great writer...best I've ever read...he phrases things a certain way for a reason...people always seem to want to help Him out...explain away his grammar, etc...He doesn't need the help...
Anyway, I'll give you a hint on the idiom...think of how they start each episode(after the first one) on LOST or HEROES...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
More Precious than Gold...
...is a thoughtful gift from the heart of your child...
My daughter Lacy left this morning to go back to school at AMDA down in LA. She brought me something at 5:00 this morning before she left with her mother for the airport. A simple, hand woven bracelet. It might not seem like much...but it means the world to me.
Lacy knows that I love it when she makes things for me. The last bracelet she made for me I wore for almost two years before it finally wore out and fell off...I still have it though. As much as that one meant to me, this one means more...so much more.
Lacy was home for the holiday. She had a scant few days to catch up with all of her friends, visit family, spend extra time with her mother, sister, and brother...and help her mother and I make Thanksgiving dinners for dogs for my wife's business. Yet, she somehow still found the time to make the bracelet for me.
I know it was hard. The design that I like is made of alternating arrows to honor my Native American heritage...very intricate. It has 52 arrows, one for each year of my life...the colors are black and white in honor of the story behind my Navajo name...Naaki Tslichi...means TWO DOGS...she had to use a special thread because I have a severe allergy to latex...it almost killed me once...
She'll be nineteen the next time I see her...I still remember holding her up to the window at the top of the stairs in our first house up here in Portland seventeen years ago...the way the amber rays of the street light played across her hair and danced across the magic that the wonder of first snow brought to her eyes...
"It's snowing Daddy...can you believe it?"
It's still snowing for me...all of that wonder, awe and beauty that life sometimes brings when we least expect it...still snowing...because of the love of my wonderful daughter...
My daughter Lacy left this morning to go back to school at AMDA down in LA. She brought me something at 5:00 this morning before she left with her mother for the airport. A simple, hand woven bracelet. It might not seem like much...but it means the world to me.
Lacy knows that I love it when she makes things for me. The last bracelet she made for me I wore for almost two years before it finally wore out and fell off...I still have it though. As much as that one meant to me, this one means more...so much more.
Lacy was home for the holiday. She had a scant few days to catch up with all of her friends, visit family, spend extra time with her mother, sister, and brother...and help her mother and I make Thanksgiving dinners for dogs for my wife's business. Yet, she somehow still found the time to make the bracelet for me.
I know it was hard. The design that I like is made of alternating arrows to honor my Native American heritage...very intricate. It has 52 arrows, one for each year of my life...the colors are black and white in honor of the story behind my Navajo name...Naaki Tslichi...means TWO DOGS...she had to use a special thread because I have a severe allergy to latex...it almost killed me once...
She'll be nineteen the next time I see her...I still remember holding her up to the window at the top of the stairs in our first house up here in Portland seventeen years ago...the way the amber rays of the street light played across her hair and danced across the magic that the wonder of first snow brought to her eyes...
"It's snowing Daddy...can you believe it?"
It's still snowing for me...all of that wonder, awe and beauty that life sometimes brings when we least expect it...still snowing...because of the love of my wonderful daughter...
Saturday, November 29, 2008
I Have Trust Issues...
My Granny used to joke that my first word wasn't mama or dada...it was why. I guess even back then I had trust issues. My Dad's response to my incessant questions was to buy the World Book Encyclopedia set when I was five. He would, from that point on when I asked a question, point to the set and say, "Look it up." Which, I did. Pretty soon I was reading the Encyclopedia for fun.(I was a weird kid, but more on that in another post) Finding out the truth for myself became somewhat of a life obsession.
I grew up in church. My parents were the head Deacon and Deaconess by the time they adopted me, so we were there before everyone showed up, and after everyone left. It seemed like we were there fifteen times a week, but we weren't...I was fourteen years old...in my second year of college(I told you, I was one really weird kid) when it finally dawned on me what being a Christian meant...especially what it meant doing without. Read I Corinthians chapter 15...it presents an a priori argument for the Resurrection with an interesting caveat...if it's a lie, your not miserable, you're "...of all men most miserable." So, "...eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." I took that as quite a challenge. I spent most of the next two years studying comparative religions, with a strong dose of philosophy. I concluded, at the end, that Scriptural Christianity made the most sense to me. I soon discovered that the Church, however, was not necessarily the most conducive place for the pursuit of Scriptural Christianity...especially from a now sixteen year old punk in his fourth year of college asking..."Why?" after a certain sermon from the pastor one morning.
The lesson that Sunday was how Jesus didn't turn water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana, he turned it into grape juice. The sermon was complete with the requisite overhead projector, charts, graphs, examples of how the Greeks used fermented grape paste to make differing strengths of wine, with the word for wine in Koine Greek thrown in for good measure.
The passage is John chapter 2:1-12...go ahead and read it...I'll wait...
Done? Good...if you have any life experience at all, you can see why his sermon caused problems for me.
I go to the pastor. Tell him I have a problem with the sermon. He asks what my problem is. OK.
They're three days into a wedding feast...run out of wine...Jesus' mom comes and tells him... like, what?...he's going to hop on his donkey and run to the local 7-11 for more?(By the way, that should show you this wasn't his first miracle...think they ever ran out of stuff at Jesus' house when he was growing up?) He has them get Kosherly purified urns and fill them up to the brim...then immediately serve it...now, no one can say there was any wine left over in the urns, or that someone slipped some grape paste in after...besides, look at what the ruler says to the bridegroom...he saved the best for last...
The pastor wants to know if I drink...I tell him not much, but I've already bar tended parties for friends. Everybody like it when the anal retentive control freak tends bar...no weird hallucinogens are going in...I tell him I've done more than one margarita night...you start off with Cuervo Gold, then down to the plain wrap tequila...pretty soon you're using vodka, rum, gin...by three o'clock you're making margaritas out of beer. The drunk people don't notice, but if anybody even half sober shows up, well...let's just say they can tell right off these aren't high quality margaritas...I tell him the context makes it clear what Jesus made...
His last line of defense..."If you could read Greek, you wouldn't question me...you're wrong, but I'm not going to discuss it any more with you."
I was, from that point on, pretty much the Anti-Christ at my church. My best friend was the pastor's nephew...he lived at the pastor's house. He'd shown me the bottles of wine that the pastor drank with dinner...no Welches in the bunch...and the pastor knew that I knew...you see, drinking is one of those denominational sins...he didn't believe it, he just taught it to keep his job...
One good thing came out of the experience. I taught myself Greek...then Hebrew...I told you, I have trust issues. I made sure no one was going to try and pull that little number on me again.
By the way, if you're curious, the Greek word for wine in that passage in John is
oinou...just means wine, not table wine/grape juice...
Here's the real moral of the story...when it comes to a subject as important as your life, and how you're going to live it...think for yourself...just because someone, including or especially me, can read Greek and/or Hebrew, it doesn't mean they're right...
I grew up in church. My parents were the head Deacon and Deaconess by the time they adopted me, so we were there before everyone showed up, and after everyone left. It seemed like we were there fifteen times a week, but we weren't...I was fourteen years old...in my second year of college(I told you, I was one really weird kid) when it finally dawned on me what being a Christian meant...especially what it meant doing without. Read I Corinthians chapter 15...it presents an a priori argument for the Resurrection with an interesting caveat...if it's a lie, your not miserable, you're "...of all men most miserable." So, "...eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." I took that as quite a challenge. I spent most of the next two years studying comparative religions, with a strong dose of philosophy. I concluded, at the end, that Scriptural Christianity made the most sense to me. I soon discovered that the Church, however, was not necessarily the most conducive place for the pursuit of Scriptural Christianity...especially from a now sixteen year old punk in his fourth year of college asking..."Why?" after a certain sermon from the pastor one morning.
The lesson that Sunday was how Jesus didn't turn water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana, he turned it into grape juice. The sermon was complete with the requisite overhead projector, charts, graphs, examples of how the Greeks used fermented grape paste to make differing strengths of wine, with the word for wine in Koine Greek thrown in for good measure.
The passage is John chapter 2:1-12...go ahead and read it...I'll wait...
Done? Good...if you have any life experience at all, you can see why his sermon caused problems for me.
I go to the pastor. Tell him I have a problem with the sermon. He asks what my problem is. OK.
They're three days into a wedding feast...run out of wine...Jesus' mom comes and tells him... like, what?...he's going to hop on his donkey and run to the local 7-11 for more?(By the way, that should show you this wasn't his first miracle...think they ever ran out of stuff at Jesus' house when he was growing up?) He has them get Kosherly purified urns and fill them up to the brim...then immediately serve it...now, no one can say there was any wine left over in the urns, or that someone slipped some grape paste in after...besides, look at what the ruler says to the bridegroom...he saved the best for last...
The pastor wants to know if I drink...I tell him not much, but I've already bar tended parties for friends. Everybody like it when the anal retentive control freak tends bar...no weird hallucinogens are going in...I tell him I've done more than one margarita night...you start off with Cuervo Gold, then down to the plain wrap tequila...pretty soon you're using vodka, rum, gin...by three o'clock you're making margaritas out of beer. The drunk people don't notice, but if anybody even half sober shows up, well...let's just say they can tell right off these aren't high quality margaritas...I tell him the context makes it clear what Jesus made...
His last line of defense..."If you could read Greek, you wouldn't question me...you're wrong, but I'm not going to discuss it any more with you."
I was, from that point on, pretty much the Anti-Christ at my church. My best friend was the pastor's nephew...he lived at the pastor's house. He'd shown me the bottles of wine that the pastor drank with dinner...no Welches in the bunch...and the pastor knew that I knew...you see, drinking is one of those denominational sins...he didn't believe it, he just taught it to keep his job...
One good thing came out of the experience. I taught myself Greek...then Hebrew...I told you, I have trust issues. I made sure no one was going to try and pull that little number on me again.
By the way, if you're curious, the Greek word for wine in that passage in John is
oinou...just means wine, not table wine/grape juice...
Here's the real moral of the story...when it comes to a subject as important as your life, and how you're going to live it...think for yourself...just because someone, including or especially me, can read Greek and/or Hebrew, it doesn't mean they're right...
- CONTEXT
- CONTEXT
- CONTEXT
Read the passages for yourself...ask God for wisdom...just don't be surprised if He drops a Philip in your chariot...
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About Me
- Christopher Blake
- Christopher Blake is a loving husband...devoted father...minister...crippled ex-cop...screenwriter...novelist...actor...and more than a little rough around the edges...