Hebrew Best Quotes

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.

The original Hebrew word for woman, a word that is used twice to refer to the first woman, three times to refer to strong military forces, and sixteen times to refer to God, is this: Ezer...I learn this: "The word Ezer has two roots: strong and benevolent. The best translation of Ezer is: Warrior." God created woman as a Warrior.

Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.

In Hebrew, satan means an advocate of the alternative, the one who makes the arguments you don't know how to refute." Michelangelo looked to the old Jew, still grinning wickedly in the corner. "That satan is my best friend.

Tell someone to stop sinning and at best they may do so reluctantly and partially. But give them a vision of knowing God and his glory, and they’ll gladly root out all that gets in the way of their relationship with God (Hebrews 12:1–3).

Increase. Being fruitful is a good and necessary start, but it should grow into the next phase, increase. Once again, even though the idea here is to multiply or reproduce, sexual procreation is only part of the meaning. The Hebrew word for increase also can mean “abundance,” “to be in authority,” “to enlarge,” and “to excel.” It carries the sense of refining your gift until it is completely unique. It is impossible to reproduce what you have not refined. In this context, then, to increase means not only to multiply or reproduce as in having children, but also to improve and excel, mastering your gift and becoming the very best you can possibly be at what you do. It also means learning how to manage the resources God has given you and developing a strategy for managing the increase that will come through refinement. By refining your gift, you make room for it in the world. The more refined your gift, the more in demand you will be. Proverbs 18:16 (KJV) says, “A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.” By refining your gift, you make room for it in the world. What is your fruit—your gift? What are you known for? What do you have that is reproducible? What quality or ability do you have that causes people to seek you out? What brings you joy? What are you passionate about? What do you have to offer the world, even just your little part of it? Fruit must be reproducible or else it is not genuine fruit. “Be fruitful” means to produce fruit; “increase” means to reproduce it.

The Hebrews throughout their history were being constantly headed off from the worship of Nature-gods; not because the Nature-gods were in all respects unlike the God of Nature but because, at best, they were merely like, and it was the destiny of that nation to be turned away from likenesses to the thing itself.

The Hebrew word translated here as “God” is “elohim” and elohim is plural, so the first verse of the Bible should actually read:   “In the beginning gods created the heaven and the earth.”   This is no small thing. The difference between God, capital G, and gods, small g, is the difference between monotheism and polytheism.

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1

In addition to the eternal, mystical Silence and the Holy Spirit, certain gnostics suggest a third characterization of the divine Mother: as Wisdom. Here the Greek feminine term for “wisdom,” sophia, translates a Hebrew feminine term, hokhmah.

God, our Heavenly Father, loves us, His children—and one of our greatest privileges is coming to Him in prayer. And because He already knows our needs, we can be confident His answer will be best. If He didn’t know our needs, why bother to pray? But He does, and this should give us confidence in prayer. Thank God that He knows your needs and wants you to come to Him in prayer. Remember: His Son gave His life “that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and my answer is, poetry and novels—including short stories under the head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke—why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value. The same thing is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant, and of volumes like Sutherland's "Growth of the Moral Instinct," or Acton's Essays and Lounsbury's studies—here again I am not trying to class books together, or measure one by another, or enumerate one in a thousand of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in some line or other of serious thought, scientific or historical or philosophical or economic or governmental, find any number of books which are charming to read, and which in addition give that for which his or her soul hungers. I do not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to read a great many different books of this character, just as every one else should read them. But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.

The Dead Father was slaying, in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood. Also a blower upon the marrow trumpet and one upon the slide trumpet and one who wearing upon his head the skin of a cat performed upon the menacing murmurous cornu and three blowers on the hunting horn and several blowers of the conch shell and a player of the double aulos and flautists of all descriptions and a Panpiper and a fagotto player and two virtuosos of the quail whistle and a zampogna player whose fingering of the chanters was sweet to the ear and by-the-bye and during the rest period he slew four buzzers and a shawmist and one blower upon the water jar and a clavicytheriumist who was before he slew her a woman, and a stroker of the theorbo and countless nervous-fingered drummers as well as an archlutist, and then whanging his sword this way and that the Dead Father slew a cittern plucker and five lyresmiters and various mandolinists, and slew too a violist and a player of the kit and a picker of the psaltery and a beater of the dulcimer and a hurdy-gurdier and a player of the spike fiddle and sundry kettledrummers and a triangulist and two-score finger cymbal clinkers and a xylophone artist and two gongers and a player of the small semantron who fell with his iron hammer still in his hand and a trictrac specialist and a marimbist and a maracist and a falcon drummer and a sheng blower and a sansa pusher and a manipulator of the gilded ball. The Dead Father resting with his two hands on the hilt of his sword, which was planted in the red and steaming earth. My anger, he said proudly. Then the Dead Father sheathing his sword pulled from his trousers his ancient prick and pissed upon the dead artists, severally and together, to the best of his ability-four minutes, or one pint. Impressive, said Julie, had they not been pure cardboard. My dear, said Thomas, you deal too harshly with him. I have the greatest possible respect for him and for what he represents, said Julie, let us proceed.

if you dwell often on the truth that God is Lord and orders everything, even the frustrations, for our sanctification (Hebrews 12:511; cf. Romans 8:28ff.), you will find yourself able increasingly, even in the most maddening moments, to “keep your cool”—and that is best of all.

It’s tough to respond rather than react when you feel like, and sometimes are, the victim of your kids’ behavior. Yet God (the Ultimate Parent) tells us how He responds to His children’s behavior: with grace-based discipline. And He also tells us why: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6).

Relax. Do not become anxious. Be afraid of nothing. Everything is working out for the best (Romans 8:28). How can you ever fear change when your life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3 AMP), and I am God who does not change (Malachi 3:6)? I am “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 NKJV).

God is God of history and of nations. Also of nature. Originally Yahweh was probably a volcanic deity. But he periodically enters history, the best example being when he intervened to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. They were shepherds and accustomed to freedom; it was terrible for them to be making bricks. And the Pharaoh had them gathering the straw as well and still being required to meet their quota of bricks per day. It is an archetypal timeless situation. God bringing men out of slavery and into freedom. Pharaoh represents all tyrants at all times." Her voice was calm and reasonable; Asher felt impressed.

Isaiah was not only the most remarkable of the prophets, he was by far the greatest writer in the Old Testament. He was evidently a magnificent preacher, but it is likely he set his words down in writing. They certainly achieved written form very early and remained among the most popular of all the holy writings: among the texts found at Qumran after the Second World War was a leather scroll, 23 feet long, giving the whole of Isaiah in fifty columns of Hebrew, the best preserved and longest ancient manuscript of the Bible we possess.216 The early Jews loved his sparkling prose with its brilliant images, many of which have since passed into the literature of all civilized nations. But more important than the language was the thought: Isaiah was pushing humanity towards new moral discoveries.

But Anra was far cleverer than I at reading. He loved letters as passionately as I did the outside. For him, they were alive. I remember shim showing me some Egyptian hieroglyphs and telling me that they were all animals and insects. And then he showed me some Egyptian hieratics and demotics and told me those were the same animals in disguise. But Hebrew, he said, was best of all, for each letter was a magic charm.

I’ve sat at the piano for hours already, looking for lyrics and melodies, but everything sounds the same and I feel as uninspired as ever. Does it mean I’m finished? A more sobering thought: if I’m finished, would I miss it? But the truth is, I’ve been here before. Many times. We all have. So how do we find the faith to press on? Remember. Remember, Hebrew children, who you once were in Egypt. Remember the altars set up along the way to remind yourselves that you made the journey and God rescued you from sword and famine, from chariots and pestilence, that once you were there, but now you are here. It happened. Our memories are fallible, residing in that most complex and mysterious organ in the human body (and therefore the known universe), capable of being suppressed, manipulated, altered, but also profoundly powerful and able to transport a person to a place fifty years ago all because of a whiff of your grandfather’s cologne or an old book or the salty air. As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me. Remember with every sip of wine that we shared this meal, you and I. Remember. So I look at the last album, the last book, and am forced to admit that I didn’t know anymore then than I do now. Every song is an Ebenezer stone, evidence of God’s faithfulness. I just need to remember. Trust is crucial. So is self-forgetfulness and risk and a measure of audacity. And now that I think about it, there’s also wonder, insight, familiarity with Scripture, passion, a good night’s sleep, breakfast (preferably an egg sandwich), an encouraging voice, diligence, patience. I need silence. Privacy. Time—that’s what I need: more time. But first I need a vacation, because I’ve been really grinding away at this other stuff and my mental cache is full. A deadline would be great. I work best with deadlines, and maybe some bills piling up. Some new guitar strings would help, and a nice candle. And that’s all I need, in the words of Steve Martin’s The Jerk. This is the truth: all I really need is a guitar, some paper, and discipline. If only I would apply myself.

In the life of Moses, in Hebrew folklore, there is a remarkable passage. Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has in a wooden bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away. So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies 'This is God's milk.' Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means. The shepherd says 'I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as on offering to God.' Moses, who is far more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, 'And does God drink it?' 'Yes,' replies the shepherd, 'He does.' Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that He does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk. Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides, the night comes, and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight towards the milk, which he laps up, and disappears into the desert again. The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. 'What's the matter?' he asks. The shepherd says 'You were right, God is pure spirit, and He doesn't want my milk.' Moses is surprised. He says 'You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.' 'Yes, I do' says the shepherd, 'but the only thing I could do to express my love for Him has been taken away from me.' Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard. In the night in a vision, God speaks to him and says 'Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure spirit. Nevertheless I always accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me, as the expression of his love, but since, being pure spirit, I do not need the milk, I shared it with this little fox, who is very fond of milk.

Very Like a Whale One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor. Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts, Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else. What foes it mean when we are told That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold? In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians. However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity, We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity. Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things, But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings. No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof; Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof? Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most, Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host. But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them. That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson; They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison, And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm, And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly, What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

it is sometimes suggested that Bible translations should capitalize pronouns referring to deity. It has seemed best not to capitalize deity pronouns in the ESV, however, for the following reasons: first, there is nothing in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that corresponds to such capitalization; second, the practice of capitalizing deity pronouns in English Bible translations is a recent innovation, which began only in the mid-twentieth century; and, third, such capitalization is absent from the KJV Bible and the whole stream of Bible translations that the ESV seeks to carry forward.

The Hebrew original does not say, ‘Do not kill.’ It says, ‘Do not murder.’ Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life—one is “kill” (harag, , in Hebrew) and the other is “murder” (ratsach, , in Hebrew). Kill means: 1.Taking any life—whether of a human being or an animal. 2.Taking a human life deliberately or by accident. 3.Taking a human life legally or illegally, morally or immorally. On the other hand, murder can only mean one thing: The illegal or immoral taking of a human life. That’s why we say, ‘I killed a mosquito,’ not ‘I murdered a mosquito.’ And that’s why we would say, ‘The worker was accidentally killed,’ not ‘The worker was accidentally murdered.

Nonetheless, Augustine and Pusey are surely clear examples of fighting one’s battle on the wrong ground. They assume that if unbelievers mock and question God’s ability to do the marvelous, then the appropriate response must be to affirm God’s ability to do the marvelous and encourage a stance of reverence. Both elements of the response are indeed appropriate to believers—but this is surely not the place to invoke them. To put it in other terms, one must first consider the genre of Jonah and the literary conventions that it utilizes, and then consider how best to promote a right appreciation and understanding of the book,7 rather than meet flatfooted mockery with equally flatfooted piety.

It were indeed meet for us not at all to require [15] the aid of the   written Word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the   Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are   inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But,   since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any   rate embrace the second best course.    For that the former was better, God hath made manifest, [16] both by   His words, and by His doings. Since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and   unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not   by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after   the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of   wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the   admonition which is given by these.    And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old   Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the   apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words   He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for "He,"   saith our Lord, "shall bring all things to your remembrance." [17] And   that thou mayest learn that this was far better, hear what He saith by   the Prophet: "I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into   their mind, and in their heart I will write them," and, "they shall be   all taught of God." [18] And Paul too, pointing out the same   superiority, said, that they had received a law "not in tables of   stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." [19]    But since in process of time they made shipwreck, some with regard to   doctrines, others as to life and manners, there was again need that   they should be put in remembrance by the written word.

Preface WITH THE ADVENT OF multiple modern English translations of the Bible being published over the last fifty years, Christians have come to realize that there can be a wide range of meanings and renderings of various words from the Bible in the original language. As a Hebrew teacher and student of ancient languages one of the most common questions I get is, “What is the best translation?” This is usually followed by the question, “Which translation is the closest to the original Biblical language?” The answer I give to both questions is, “All of them.” With few exceptions, every translation and paraphrase of the Bible is done with much scholarship and prayer by the translators. Every translator is convinced that he or she has presented the best renderings for each word and firmly believes they have given the rendering that is closest to the original language. So we now ask the question as to why there are

the question of whether the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt was an actual event or merely part of myth and legend also remains unanswered at the moment .. alternative explanations of the Exodus story might be correct. They include the possibility that the Israelites took advantage of the havoc caused by the Sea Peoples in Canaan to move in and take control of the region; that the Israelites were actually part of the larger group of Canaanites already living in the land; or that the Israelites had migrated peacefully into the region over the course of centuries .. the Exodus story was probably made up centuries later, as several scholars have suggested. In the meantime, it will be best to remain aware of the potential for fraud, for many disreputable claims have already been made about events, peoples, places, and things connected with the Exodus. Undoubtedly more misinformation, whether intentional or not, will be forthcoming in the future.

I remember meeting a man who gave sex seminars to students at various college campuses. To get people to come he passed out flyers that were entitled “How to Have the Best Sex on Earth.” Of course, his lecture attracted a huge turnout. He spoke about sex between two virgins on their wedding night being disease-free, guilt-free, comparison-free, and shame-free, as well as being pleasing to God. It is the best sex you can have on earth. He explained that many people fall short and that is why Jesus died on a cross. In Christ anyone can start over. As 1 Corinthians 6:9--11 says: “The sexually immoral…will [not] inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed…sanctified…[and] justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” The forgiveness found in Christ doesn’t take away from the fact that God’s way is always the best way for a marriage and our world. Hebrews 13:4 says: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure.” That is exactly what Missy and I did.

Why did the best Jewish poet of the post-exile generation choose the (probably) Persian fable of Job as the basis for his greatest work? What does the obviously Hebrew poet want to accomplish by presenting Job as an “Everyman” character rather than as a Jew? What does this suggest about the way that the Abrahamic Covenant was understood by at least some people during the Babylonian captivity? What different perspectives do Job’s Comforters represent? Who in the poet’s culture held the views attributed to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar? Why do Job’s friends hold so firmly to their belief in Job’s guilt? Why are they willing to condemn the man that they came to comfort? What do they consider more important than friendship? Do we ever act like they do? How does the poet want us to answer the question, “Why do people suffer?” How does he not want us to answer this question? Why does the poet represent God at the end of Job as an asker of questions rather than as a giver of answers? Does the God that the poet presents at the end of the poem deserve our respect, or just our fear? Is there a difference? Does the final prose segment of Job undercut the poem? Or does the poem’s rebuttal undercut its ideology so effectively that it becomes ironic? Is it possible to believe in a God of rewards and punishments after reading Job?

ONLY IMAGINE   In his classic self-help book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve.” His premise, and that of many others, is that once the human mind is programmed with a certain expectation, it will begin to fulfill that expectation. The Scriptures declared this principle long before Hill wrote his book. Faith believes and then sees. It is the expectation of a miracle before it occurs. The Aluminum Company of America coined an interesting word: imagineering. They combined the idea of imagining a product or service, with the idea that the dream would then be engineered into a reality. Throughout history we’ve seen this principle at work.   A primitive ancestor came up with the idea that it was easier to roll objects than drag them—and he carved a wheel from stone.   A man named Gutenberg imagined that letters might be set in metal and combined to create words, which then could be printed repeatedly with the application of ink. He set about to make such a machine.   Men designed cathedrals that took decades to build—but build them they did. Ideas and dreams you have today will directly influence your future. What you begin to believe for, and then how you act on that belief, will result in what you have, do, and are in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Let your “faith imagination” soar today. Believe for God’s highest and best in your life. Then begin to live and work as if that miracle is on its way.   FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN. HEBREWS 11:1 NKJV

Derrida says adieu to Ishmael and to democracy. He hears the salvation in the “Latinity” of ‘salut’. Perhaps we should learn enough Arabic for simple greetings, enough to say Ahlan wa sahlan and Marhaba. Marhaba, which is used as English speakers use ‘Hello,’ carries within it the idea that the one greeted is welcome, that there is plenty of room. Arabic words, like words in Hebrew, are formed from roots. Each root leads to a tree of words. The root of the word r-h-b gives us rahb, which means spacious or roomy but also ‘unconfined’ and ‘open-minded, broad-minded, frank, liberal.’ It is also the root of rahaba, the word for the public square. Marhaba is a good greeting for liberals, who at their open-minded, broad-minded best, can find that there is plenty of room in the public square. The Egyptian poet Farouk Mustafa translated Ahlan wa Sahlan as “you are among your people, and your keep is easy.” Like Marhaba, the greeting marks a welcome, a curious one. Ahlan wa sahlan is not saud simply to one’s own, to family and friends and fellow citizens. It is said to foreigners, to travelers, to people who are not, in the ordinary sense, one’s own. Like the American “Come in, make yourself at home”, it is said to people who are not at home, who might be turned away. The greeting recognizes a difference only to set it aside. Ahlan wa sahlan recognizes that there are different nations, and that they might find themselves in a foreign country, among an alien people. This greeting marks the possibility that the other, the alien, the wanderer, and the refugee might be met with welcome rather than with fear.

In addition, Christ Jesus spoke a language called Aramaic. While He was born Jewish and could read the Hebrew sacred texts, it is probable that He did not speak Hebrew with his Apostles or with those people who came to hear Him speak. For, it was not common during the time of Christ Jesus for the Jewish people to speak in Hebrew. Extremely few people in ancient times could read or write. The Jewish people of the time of Christ Jesus spoke Aramaic. The New Testament Gospels, on the other hand, were written in Greek. Thus, before even beginning to speak about all the errors created by innumerable scribes re-copying the Gospels over and over again, we must confront the fact that when Christ Jesus spoke, he spoke in Aramaic. We know that the authors of the Gospels in the New Testament were not the persons traditionally named as the authors of these Gospels: Saint Mark did not write the Gospel of Mark; Saint Matthew did not write the Gospel of Matthew and so on. In order to create each one of the New Testament Gospels, some author who spoke and wrote in Greek had to have read a document already written in Aramaic (or possibly Hebrew, although this is unlikely), or possibly sat and listened as one of the Apostles or followers of Christ Jesus related the stories to him in Aramaic and then the author who spoke and wrote in Greek, translated the Aramaic tales into Greek. So, straightaway, we realize that it is impossible that we are reading the exact words of Christ Jesus; the best that we can hope for is that we are reading the best translation of Christ Jesus’ words from Aramaic, into Greek and finally into English.

JANUARY 29 Colossians 3:15-17 Offering Thanks Do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks.   COLOSSIANS 3:17 IN WORD   Hebrews 12:28 says that gratitude is an acceptable offering to God. Why? Because it acknowledges who He is better than any other attitude. It recognizes that He is a Blesser, a Giver, and a Redeemer of incomparable worth. Gratitude sees God as He is. Gratitude especially sees God accurately when it sees Him through Jesus. After all, the Incarnation was God’s plan to make Himself visible to human eyes. It was His aggressive strategy to make Himself accessible to sinners in need of salvation. Jesus is the ultimate act of God in this world. For the early church, Jesus quickly became the identity of the believer. Paul, for example, saw himself to be crucified with Him, buried with Him, raised up with Him, exalted with Him, seated in heavenly places with Him, and united with Him forever. When someone is that identified with his Redeemer, the attitude of his heart becomes a clear statement of the Redeemer’s worth. If gratitude isn’t there, the Redeemer isn’t worth much to that person. If we value Jesus as our identity, we will be exceedingly grateful for what He means to us. IN DEED   You may faithfully make offerings of money and time, but what are you offering God with your attitude? Is it an acceptable offering, declaring His worth accurately? Or does it underestimate His value in your life by neglecting the thankfulness due Him? Or were you even aware that the attitudes of your heart are, whether you mean it or not, a statement about Him and an offering to Him? Watch your heart carefully. Whatever fills it will soon dominate your life and experience. With that in mind, let thankfulness flow from within as a sacrifice to God. Insist that your heart make statements of truth about your Redeemer, acknowledging the enormous sacrifice He made in order to offer you enormous glory. Recognize the salvation—the utterly complete, comprehensive salvation—that now defines your life. Whatever you do, do it in His name with thanks for who He is. The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy. —Mother Teresa

merciful and kind, forgiving and gentle. If anything, He wants a relationship with me and so He would not ignore me. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12).   c) He heard my prayer and answered, Yes later   I know that God hears my prayers. I know by His very nature He would not ignore my prayers. (2 Chronicles 7 NIV) So He may be saying, Yes later. God knows the past, the present and the future. He lives in eternity. He knows what is best for me and when. His timing is perfect and I must learn to accept this. I must lift my prayer to Him and then settle back knowing that He is in full control.   It’s just a matter of patience. “We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised” (Hebrews 6:12). Like the time I had to wait for my house to sell. I knew God heard my prayer to sell. I knew He was not ignoring me. I just had to wait in His perfect timing. And lo and behold, it was perfect as it allowed us time to find the home in which to settle.   But what if God’s answer is No?   d) He heard my prayer and answered, No   This has been my experience in the past. I prayed for a specific outcome, yet when the decision was made, my request was denied. I felt crushed and betrayed. Little did I know at the time that God had a much better plan. God is not a malicious, vengeful God. No, He is loving and kind. “The LORD is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made” (Psalm 145:13).   What ended up happening in that situation was a very different, much better outcome. Something that had not entered my mind. I had limited my prayer to my own finite wisdom and understanding of the situation at that moment in time. God has infinite wisdom. He knows the hearts of people. And although He said No to my prayer, it was only because He had something better in mind.   I am reminded that there are many ways God enriches our lives through trials and suffering; things we could not have learned without going through those troubles.   My prayer for my daughter’s health has been heard. I can rest in the knowledge that God is not ignoring my pleas. I also find peace knowing that God will answer my prayer within His perfect timing, and if He has a better way or more favorable outcome, He will respond accordingly. I can relax knowing that I have laid my prayer at His feet; I can rest knowing that He loves me and is taking care of me.       Prayer is communing with God. ~ Emma Tcheau

It was a story no one could tell me when I was child. The story of Russian Jewry had been told in English, by American Jews; to them, it was a story that began with antiquity, culminated with the pogroms, and ended with emigration. For those who remained in Russia, there had been a time before the pogroms and a time after: a period of home, then a period of fear and even greater fear and then brief hope again, and then a different kind of fear, when one no longer feared for one's life but fear never having hope again. This story did not end; it faded into a picture of my parents sitting at the kitchen table poring over an atlas of the world, or of me sitting on the bedroom floor talking at my best friend. The history of the Soviet Union itself remains a story without an narrative; every attempt to tell this story in Russia has stopped short, giving way to the resolve to turn away from the decades of pain and suffering and bloodshed. With every telling, stories of Stalinism and the Second World War become more mythologized. And with so few Jew left in Russia, with so little uniting them, the Russian Jewish world is one of absences and silences. I had no words for this when I was twelve, but what I felt more strongly that anything, more strongly even than the desire to go to Israel, was this absence of a story. My Jewishness consisted of the experience of being ostracized and beaten up and the specter of not being allowed into university. Once I found my people milling outside the synagogue (we never went inside, where old men in strange clothes sang in an unfamiliar language), a few old Yiddish songs and a couple of newer Hebrew ones were added to my non-story. Finally, I had read the stories of Sholem Aleichem, which were certainly of a different world, as distant from my modern urban Russian-speaking childhood as anything could be. In the end, my Jewish identity was entirely negative: it consisted of non-belonging. How had I and other late-Soviet Jews been so impoverished? Prior to the Russian Revolution, most of the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire. Following the Second World War, Russia was the only European country whose Jewish population numbered not in the hundreds or even thousands but in the millions. How did this country rid itself of Jewish culture altogether? How did the Jews of Russia lose their home? Much later, as I tried to find the answers to these questions, I kept circling back tot he story of Birobidzhan, which, in its concentrated tragic absurdity seemed to tell it all.

Chapter 1, “Esoteric Antiquarianism,” situates Egyptian Oedipus in its most important literary contexts: Renaissance Egyptology, including philosophical and archeological traditions, and early modern scholarship on paganism and mythology. It argues that Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies are better understood as an antiquarian rather than philosophical enterprise, and it shows how much he shared with other seventeenth-century scholars who used symbolism and allegory to explain ancient imagery. The next two chapters chronicle the evolution of Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies, including his pioneering publications on Coptic. Chapter 2, “How to Get Ahead in the Republic of Letters,” treats the period from 1632 until 1637 and tells the story of young Kircher’s decisive encounter with the arch-antiquary Peiresc, which revolved around the study of Arabic and Coptic manuscripts. Chapter 3, “Oedipus in Rome,” continues the narrative until 1655, emphasizing the networks and institutions, especially in Rome, that were essential to Kircher’s enterprise. Using correspondence and archival documents, this pair of chapters reconstructs the social world in which Kircher’s studies were conceived, executed, and consumed, showing how he forged his career by establishing a reputation as an Oriental philologist. The next four chapters examine Egyptian Oedipus and Pamphilian Obelisk through a series of thematic case studies. Chapter 4, “Ancient Theology and the Antiquarian,” shows in detail how Kircher turned Renaissance occult philosophy, especially the doctrine of the prisca theologia, into a historical framework for explaining antiquities. Chapter 5, “The Discovery of Oriental Antiquity,” looks at his use of Oriental sources, focusing on Arabic texts related to Egypt and Hebrew kabbalistic literature. It provides an in-depth look at the modus operandi behind Kircher’s imposing edifice of erudition, which combined bogus and genuine learning. Chapter 6, “Erudition and Censorship,” draws on archival evidence to document how the pressures of ecclesiastical censorship shaped Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies. Readers curious about how Kircher actually produced his astonishing translations of hieroglyphic inscriptions will find a detailed discussion in chapter 7, “Symbolic Wisdom in an Age of Criticism,” which also examines his desperate effort to defend their reliability. This chapter brings into sharp focus the central irony of Kircher’s project: his unyielding antiquarian passion to explain hieroglyphic inscriptions and discover new historical sources led him to disregard the critical standards that defined erudite scholarship at its best. The book’s final chapter, “Oedipus at Large,” examines the reception of Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies through the eighteenth century in relation to changing ideas about the history of civilization.

[T]he ancients, knowing nothing about vaporisation, drew an absolute line between solids and liquids on the one hand and what we call gases on the other. The name they gave to what we call gas was spiritus (Latin), pneuma (Greek) or ruach and neshama (Hebrew). In each case the word could mean air, breath or wind. The ancients thought of the wind as the breath of God. So when the Hebrews offered their account of the world’s origin, they said the powerful wind (ruach) of God fluttered over the waters. And when they told of the origin of humankind, they said that God made humans out of the dust of the earth, breathed his gentle breath (neshama) into them and they became living persons. Further, it was as obvious to ancients as it is to us that the best way of distinguishing between a living person and a corpse is to look for breath— for a living person breathes. Breath was believed to be the very essence of what constitutes a living human being, and thus the very principle of life. But for the ancients breath, air and wind were all the same. When a man dies, said Ecclesiastes, “the dust returns to the earth and the breath returns to God”. When Jesus died on the cross, according to Luke, he said, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit (pneuma)” and, “having said this he breathed his last”. Of course we are used to hearing the word ‘spirit’ in one place and ‘breath’ in the other, but in the Greek original the same word, pneuma, is used. Similarly in the King James Version (still nearer to the medieval world-view than we are) Matthew reports that “Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost (pneuma)”. During the transition to the modern world people continued to speak about spirit without realising that they were no longer talking about something originally conceived to be as tangible as the air we breathe. Christians continued to speak of God as spirit and referred to what they called the power of the Holy Spirit. Preachers continued to expound the story of Jesus and Nicodemus in John’s Gospel (where being born again of the spirit is described in terms of the blowing of the wind), but failed to draw attention to the fact that in this story the same word is sometimes translated ‘wind’ and sometimes ‘spirit’. Only slowly has it dawned upon us that in talking about spirit we are talking about something far less substantial than wind or the air that we breathe. Indeed, spirit has no substance at all. It has become a purely abstract term that has no external referent. It continues in usage as a frozen metaphor from a now obsolete worldview, and its only possible meaning is a metaphorical or symbolic one. Conservative Christians continue to speak about the Holy Spirit, the power of the spirit and so on, as if it were an oozy something that operates like the wind. Without being wholly aware of the fact, they live in the medieval world for religious purposes and return to the modern world for the mundane business of daily living.

What, then, were the original vowels in God’s name? Ultimately, we do not know. During the period of the divided kingdom, the name may have been pronounced something like “Yau,” with the “au” forming a diphthong rather than two separate syllables. Evidence from classical Hebrew (found in both Biblical and non-Biblical texts) and certain Greek renderings of the name, however, have led scholars generally to believe that “Yahweh” was the way in which the name eventually came to be pronounced. More significant is the meaning of the name Yahweh. For this there has been a wide range of suggestions: “Truly He!”; “My One”; “He Who Is”; “He Who Brings into Being”; “He Who Storms.” One of the best suggestions is that the name is a shortened form of a longer name, Yahweh Sabaoth (often rendered in English as “the LORD of Hosts” or “the LORD Almighty”; see, e.g., 2Sa 6:2). The word “Yahweh” itself is most likely a verb. Many other shortened names from the ancient Near East are verb forms, which is exactly what Yahweh appears to be. It comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to be.” But if the first vowel really is an a-vowel, then the verb likely has a causative sense: “to cause to be.” Thus, a fairly literal translation of Yahweh Sabaoth would be “He Who Causes the Hosts (of Heaven) to Be.” In general, then, the name refers to the One who creates or brings into being. ◆ The Tetragrammaton in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in a modern scroll, with the vowel sounds of Adonay added. Wikimedia Commons Go to Index of Articles in Canonical Order 4:3 it became a snake.

Potiphar, the commander of Pharaoh's guard, saw that Yahweh favored his slave Joseph—and right away I'm skeptical. Potiphar was an Egyptian and Egypt had its own ancient religion, featuring incredible gods and a fantastic afterlife. You think Potiphar or any sober Egyptian gave a rat's ass about some crap Hebrew god called Yahweh? Who killed you for squirting a little semen on the ground? And offered a piss-poor afterlife where you "gathered with your people" in some dark, subterranean shithole called Sheol?

Luther explained his philosophy this way: “I must let the literal words go and try to learn how the German says that which the Hebrew expresses…Whoever would speak German must not use Hebrew style. Rather he must see to it—once he understands the Hebrew author—that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, ‘Pray tell, what do the Germans say in such a situation?’…Let him drop the Hebrew words and express the meaning freely in the best German he knows.

The cabbage seems to have been unknown to the Hebrews. It is not mentioned in the Bible.’ I love that – so French. Just the slightest note of disappointment with God; just the merest raised eyebrow and pursued Gallic lip.

The title of this work in Hebrew begins with “The Song of Songs,” which means “the best song” or “the sublime song.”  The title continues with “The Song of Songs, which is ‘to/of’ Solomon” that produces the English title “Song of Solomon.”  The Hebrew of the book, much like the Psalms and the book of Job, does not allow for precise dating (Murphy, 1992, 150).  The book is a collection of Hebrew love songs and Solomon’s many wives, and the mention of his name in the book accounts for his association with this book. 

Adelard of Bath (ca. 1075-1160) disguised himself as a Muslim and studied at Cordoba; he translated Euclid's Elements from the Arabic translation into Latin, and Ptolemy's Almagest from Greek into Latin. When Alfonso VI of Castile captured Toledo from the Moors in 1085, he did not burn their libraries, containing a wealth of Muslim manuscripts. Under the encouragement of the Archbishop of Toledo, a veritable intelligence evaluation center was set up. A large number of translators, the best known of whom was Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187), translated from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew into Latin, at last acquainting Europe not only with classical Greek mathematics, but also with contemporary Arab algebra, trigonometry and astronomy. Before the Toledo leak opened, mediaeval Europe did not have a mathematician who was not a Moor, Greek or a Jew.

Christianity teaches that no one is innocent; all are guilty of unjust actions. If that is true of individuals, it is certainly true of nations that are made up of individuals. God stands in judgment of human sin, but has provided a way for human sin to be atoned for in the person of Jesus Christ, who paid for sin “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Christians who embrace open American exceptionalism can affirm that America is unique, is special and is blessed by God. That means America is responsible for how it uses those many blessings. And American Christians can know, teach and live the great truth that Christ is the last and best hope of humankind—not America.

And he was, by the confession of all, according to God's prediction, as well for his greatness of mind as for his contempt of difficulties, the best of all the Hebrews, for Abraham was his ancestor of the seventh generation. For Moses was the son of Amram, who was the son of Caath, whose father Levi was the son of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham.

Merril Unger who penned Unger’s Bible Dictionary in the mid-1900s wrote: (Hebrew tannin) This word is used in the Authorized Version with several meanings: (1) In connection with desert animals (Isa. 13:22; 34:13, 14, etc.), it is best translated by wolf, and not by jackal as in the Revised Version. The feminine form of the Hebrew tannah is found in Mal. 1:3. (2) Sea monsters (Psa. 74:13; 148:7; Isa. 27:1). (3) Serpents, even the smaller sorts (Deut. 32:33; Psa. 91:13)….one of the Hebrew words, usually rendered dragon is in some places translated serpents (Exodus 7:9, 10, 12).27 Unger was still debating against jackals in the mid-1900s for another creature — a wolf!

Enroll in the Best Hebrew School Atlanta for a Rich Cultural Experience Welcome to Hebrew School Atlanta, where they give a transforming educational path that celebrates Jewish heritage while also providing a rich cultural experience. Their school is committed to instilling a love of the Hebrew language, Jewish traditions, and values in each student while also encouraging individual growth and development. They think that education is about more than just learning; it is about developing a meaningful connection to one's heritage and community. They try to establish an inclusive and supportive environment in which students can explore their Jewish identity, develop a strong sense of belonging, and form lifelong connections. Their school is more than simply a place to learn; it's a thriving community that welcomes families from all walks of life. They encourage family involvement and provide opportunities for families to participate in their children's educational path. They think that fostering a compassionate and supportive atmosphere that promotes holistic growth requires a strong relationship between parents, educators, and students. Enrolling your child in the top Hebrew School in Atlanta means laying the groundwork for a lifetime of Jewish involvement, cultural awareness, and personal development. Join us on this extraordinary trip as we arouse curiosity, create a love of Hebrew, and foster a deep appreciation for Jewish School education. Let us work together to produce a wonderful cultural experience. Contact the head of the department at The Epstein School.

But the Papists are a very wicked crew, too, you know, with confession and all that,’ said Jack. ‘And they tried to blow up Parliament. Lord, how we used to keep up the Fifth of November. One of my very best friends – you would not believe how kind – was so upset when her mother married one that she took to mathematics and Hebrew directly – aleph, beth – though she was the prettiest girl for miles around – taught me navigation – splendid headpiece, bless her. She told me quantities of things about the Papists: I forget it all now, but they are certainly a very wicked crew. There is no trusting them. Look at the rebellion they have just had.

This list is particularly heavy on the Hebrew, with a noticeable trend toward Irish traditionalism. THE TWENTY WHITE BOY NAMES THAT BEST SIGNIFY HIGH-EDUCATION PARENTS* (YEARS OF MOTHER’S EDUCATION IN PARENTHESES) Dov Akiva Sander Yannick Sacha Guillaume Elon Ansel Yonah Tor Finnegan MacGregor Florian Zev Beckett Kia Ashkon Harper Sumner Calder (16.50) (16.42) (16.29) (16.20) (16.18) (16.17) (16.16) (16.14) (16.14) (16.13) (16.13) (16.10) (15.94) (15.92) (15.91) (15.90) (15.84) (15.83) (15.77) (15.75)

You really can't go wrong with the food at any Jewish holiday. Well, with the exception of Passover, because matzah is terrible and eight days of no carbs but matzah and potatoes can have you crying for pizza by the end. But think bagels and lox to break the Yom Kippur fast. All sorts of exotic fruits on Tu B'Shevat. Brisket and tzimmes and noodle kugel for pretty much any occasion. And that's only the Ashkenazi food; I'd been treated to Sephardic and Mizrahi food occasionally at friends' houses growing up, and I remembered fish cooked in spicy tomato sauce, tangines with chickpeas and saffron, Yemenite braided bread with whole eggs hidden in the twists. But Hanukkah food? Because Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the oil, it's basically a mitzvah to eat fried foods for the holiday. And doing a good deed by eating French fries or doughnuts is the absolute best way to do a good deed.

The Greek terminology for the Trinity, which includes the neuter term for spirit (pneuma) virtually requires that the third “Person” of the Trinity be asexual. But the author of the Secret Book has in mind the Hebrew term for spirit, ruah, a feminine word; and so concludes that the feminine “Person” conjoined with the Father and Son must be the Mother.

Spanking is a controversial issue these days yet it never was up until this present generation. All fifty states in the United States still allow parents to spank their children with something other than their hand at the time of this writing but make sure to check with your state or country to see if it is legal. This doesn’t include abuse in any form: pulling of the hair, slapping a child on the face, whipping a child on the back, or punching in the stomach. The best and safest place to spank a young child is on the bottom or upper thigh. Read the following verses and summarize what God has to say about the rod. Proverbs 13:24 Proverbs 23:13 Proverbs 29:15 How does God discipline us according to Hebrews 12:6? What does “chasten” mean according to the dictionary? What does “scourge” mean? God commands children to do what in Ephesians 6:1 and Colossians 3:20? Whose responsibility is it to teach your children to obey you?

It is while they were waiting to set sail from Aulis for the second time that a tragic series of events, immortalized by the later Greek playwrights, took place. Because the goddess Artemis, for reasons best known to herself, had sent winds that prevented the fleet from sailing, the increasingly impatient Agamemnon took measures that we would regard as rather extreme. He planned to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia in order to placate the goddess. The Cypria, however, puts a pleasant spin on these events, stating that Artemis snatched Iphigenia away at the last minute, making her immortal, and left a stag on the altar in her place, much as Isaac was replaced by a ram during the intended sacrifice by Abraham, as related in Genesis 22 of the Hebrew Bible. Euripides

The complete NIV Bible was first published in 1978. It was a completely new translation made by over a hundred scholars working directly from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. The translators came from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving the translation an international scope. They were from many denominations and churches—including Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Christian Reformed, Church of Christ, Evangelical Covenant, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and others. This breadth of denominational and theological perspective helped to safeguard the translation from sectarian bias. For these reasons, and by the grace of God, the NIV has gained a wide readership in all parts of the English-speaking world. The work of translating the Bible is never finished. As good as they are, English translations must be regularly updated so that they will continue to communicate accurately the meaning of God’s Word. Updates are needed in order to reflect the latest developments in our understanding of the biblical world and its languages and to keep pace with changes in English usage. Recognizing, then, that the NIV would retain its ability to communicate God’s Word accurately only if it were regularly updated, the original translators established The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT). The committee is a self-perpetuating group of biblical scholars charged with keeping abreast of advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English and issuing periodic updates to the NIV. CBT is an independent, self-governing body and has sole responsibility for the NIV text. The committee mirrors the original group of translators in its diverse international and denominational makeup and in its unifying commitment to the Bible as God’s inspired Word.

Cain complained to God, “My punishment is more than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13). Resolved to overcome his fate, he tried to build a comfortable life for himself. He started a family and began to build a city (Gen. 4:17). I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me. Without repenting, Cain set out to overcome the consequences of his sin and to provide comfortable circumstances for himself. In effect, Cain was saying, “Okay, I’m out of the Garden. Ever since you expelled Mom and Dad from Eden and placed that angelic bouncer at the gate to keep everyone out, I realized that I must come to terms with living in a world filled with weeds and thornbushes. But even though I am out of the Garden, I will not lead the miserable life of a nomad. I will do everything I can to recapture as much of the Garden experience as possible. I will build a city, plant a few flowers, and put in a recreation park for my children. I will not keep on wandering about without trying to settle down. I have no higher priority than arranging for my own comfort.” Because Cain passed on this attitude to his descendants, we are now able to contrast two ways of approaching life: Lamech’s (reflecting the ungodly influence of Cain) and Enoch’s (consistent with the godly line of Seth). Lamech declared: “I will build my city! I want my pleasures now.” Enoch said: “I will build God’s kingdom! And trust God to one day build a city for me to enjoy.” Because God cares deeply about his children, many times he chooses to relieve our suffering and solve our problems. But because his love is an intelligent love rooted in what he knows is best for us, he provides us with something more interesting to live for than ourselves. He catches us up in the supernatural reality of living for an eternal kingdom. The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God? As we explore our own lives, we must never get so immersed in ourselves that we fail to remember that there is something far more wonderful to ponder. If I am to reject Lamech’s approach and come to God as Enoch came, I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me. The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God?Are we merely committed to feeding our own souls, to arranging our lives around getting our needs met, to building our cities? Or are we committed to knowing God, to cooperating with him as loved participants in a plan larger than ourselves, to becoming like the Son whom the Father adores, and to waiting for the city that Christ is building right now? We must learn what it means to come to God, believing that he is good when life doesn’t show it, knowing that he graciously rewards honest seekers even when their souls ache relentlessly. But can we put the lessons of Hebrew 11 more practically? What would our lives look like if we were coming to God as Enoch did?

MANASSEH WAS THE WORST KING the Hebrews ever had. He was a thoroughly bad man presiding over a totally corrupt government. He reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years, a dark and evil half century. He encouraged a pagan worship that involved whole communities in sexual orgies. He installed cult prostitutes at shrines throughout the countryside. He imported wizards and sorcerers who enslaved the people in superstitions and manipulated them with their magic. The man could not do enough evil. There seemed to be no end to his barbarous cruelties. His capacity for inventing new forms of evil seemed bottomless. His appetite for the sordid was insatiable. One day he placed his son on the altar in some black and terrible ritual of witchcraft and burned him as an offering (2 Kings 21). The great Solomonic temple in Jerusalem, resplendent in its holy simplicity, empty of any form of god so that the invisible God could be attended to in worship, swarmed with magicians and prostitutes. Idols shaped as beasts and monsters defiled the holy place. Lust and greed were deified. Murders were commonplace. Manasseh dragged the people into a mire far more stinking than anything the world had yet seen. The sacred historian’s judgment was blunt: “Manasseh led them off the beaten path into practices of evil even exceeding the evil of the pagan nations that GOD had earlier destroyed” (2 Kings 21:9).[2]

Cultivating unsettledness about biblical language and unsettledness about our own—these are good reasons for studying Hebrew and Greek. But perhaps the best reason is the most obvious: reading in the original languages slows us down, and reading the text more slowly is essential for learning to love the Bible. As we know from other areas of experience, giving careful attention is not just an outcome of love; it is part of the process of growing in love. We love best those for whom we are obligated to give regular, often demanding, care: a child, an animal, a sick or elderly person, a plot of land or an old house. Inching patiently through the Greek or Hebrew text is best seen as ‘an act of charity’—ultimately, charity toward God. Poring over every syllable, frustration notwithstanding, we affirm the ages-old conviction of the faithful that these words of Scripture are indeed ‘some molten words perfected in an oven seven times.

(1524), Luther indicated that “a city’s best and greatest welfare, safety, and strength consist rather in its having many able, learned, wise, honorable, and well-educated citizens.” To train such citizens, he recommended they receive a classical liberal arts education and instruction in Hebrew and Greek so that they could study Holy Scripture with diligence. With this education in hand, students would be well prepared to assume their role as competent Christian citizens to serve the church and state.

By the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It’s the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the “H” in Jesus H. Christ stood for. It’s one of the things I should have asked him. Me? I am Levi who is called Biff. No middle initial. Joshua was my best friend.

Not surprisingly, then, a healthy Christian is one who is committed to expressing this kind of love toward other Christians. And the best place for Christians to love this way is in the assembly of God’s people called the local church. Is it no wonder then that the author of Hebrews instructs us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,” and then right away says “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24–25)? Faithful church attendance is associated tightly with stirring each other to love and good deeds. The local church is the place where love is most visibly and compellingly displayed among God’s people. It’s where the “body of Christ” is most plainly represented in the world.

We have a unique and totally unprecedented ability to innovate and transmit information and ideas from person to person. At first, modern human cultural change accelerated gradually, causing important but incremental shifts in how our ancestors hunted and gathered. Then, starting about 50,000 years ago, a cultural and technological revolution occurred that helped humans colonize the entire planet. Ever since then, cultural evolution has become an increasingly rapid, dominant, and powerful engine of change. Therefore, the best answer to the question of what makes Homo sapiens special and why we are the only human species alive is that we evolved a few slight changes in our hardware that helped ignite a software revolution that is still ongoing at an escalating pace. Who Were the First Homo sapiens? Every religion has a different explanation for when and where our species, H. sapiens, originated. According to the Hebrew Bible, God created Adam from dust in the Garden of Eden and then made Eve from his rib; in other traditions, the first humans were vomited up by gods, fashioned from mud, or birthed by enormous turtles. Science, however, provides a single account of the origin of modern humans. Further, this event has been so well studied and tested using multiple lines of evidence that we can state with a reasonable degree of confidence that modern humans evolved from archaic humans in Africa at least 200,000 years ago.

When you try to understand God’s purpose for your spirit so you can have the passion He desires for you, it requires a certain amount of trust and belief. Trust that God is in control, and believe that He will give you what you need to achieve and succeed! If you struggle in this area, here are some verses to look up and some of God’s promises to think about. 1. God will never abandon you. (See Hebrews 13:5.) 2. God wants the best for you. (See Jeremiah 29:11.) 3. God wants the best from you and He will do everything He can to help. (See John 14:26.)

It’s best understood in the Hebrew term Shalom. “Shalom,” said as a greeting or benediction, references one person’s desire to see the peace of God touch every aspect of another’s life.

Some of the scholastic rabbis just prior to Jesus' time became embarrassed by the fact that a woman with Rahab's background was spared in the destruction of Jericho and brought into Israel as a proselyte. They proposed a different understanding of the Hebrew word for harlot in Joshua 2:1. The Hebrew term is similiar to a word meaning "to feed," they claimed. Perhaps Rahab was really just an innkeeper or a hostess, they countered. The problem is, the actual Hebrew word really can mean only one thing: "harlot." That was the uncontested undertanding of this text for centuries. In fact, there is no ambiguity whatsoever in the Septuagint or in the Greek tests of Hebrews. The Greek word used to describe Rahab is porne, meaning harlot. Notice that the term comes from the same root as the English term pornography and has similar negative moral overtones. The idea of sanitizing Rahab's background was revived by some churchmen with overly delicate sensibilities in the Victorian era. C>H> Spurgeon, the best-known Baptist preacher in late nineteenth-century London, replied, This woman was no mere hostess, but a real harlot....I am persuaded that nothing but a spirit of distaste for free grace would ever have led any commentator to deny her sin. He was exactly right, of course,. Remove the stigma of sin, and you remove the need for grace. Rehab is extraordinary precisely because she received extraordinary grace. There's no need to reinvent her past to try to make her seem less of a sinner. The disturbing fact about what she once was simply magnifies the glory of divine grace, which is what made her extraodinary woman she became. That, after all, is the whole lesson of her life.

The best way to fight the devil, especially in times of challenge and stress, is to just stay calm and not get rattled, to maintain a peaceful, gentle heart that is not anxious or wrought up in the sight of God. That is what will help defeat the devil, as we are told in Philippians 1:28: And do not (for a moment] be frightened or intimidated in anything by your opponents and adversaries, for such [constancy and fearlessness] will be a clear sign (proof and seal) to them of [their impending] destruction, but [a sure token and evidence] of your deliverance and salvation, and that from God. So when the devil starts aggravating you, just remain constant. Be fearless. That will be a sign to him of his impending destruction. It will tell him that his days are numbered, and it will be a sign to God to move in your behalf and bring deliverance to you. We are told in Hebrews 12:3, Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. Make up your mind right now that you are not going to be fainthearted. Verse 5 of Hebrews 12 says, And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reproved or corrected by Him. Another

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It was John Flavel who said to his congregation in England, some three hundred years ago, “Some providences of God, like Hebrew letters, are best understood backwards.

Power of Prayer     “The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer” (Psalm 6:9).     I realize the power of prayer and the importance of praying for others. Yet sometimes I have these pesky doubts sprouting up in the garden of my mind, like weeds. Unless I pull out the root of the problem, they will continue to grow and return.   Recently, I prayed for my daughter’s healing. I also used common sense, having her sleep and take it easy all day. But then this morning her cough continued. It got progressively worse on our walk to the bus stop. Later in the day, she even had to break from an aggressive game of hide-n-seek to give her lungs a rest.   I found myself wondering; I know God is a miracle-working God, so why is she not healed? I know that God heals the sick, so why is she still coughing? I know that God says, ask and you shall receive (Luke 11) so why has my prayer not been heard? I want a miracle now. I know it’s within God’s power. Her lungs could become instantly made perfect in a simple command.   So knowing He can do this, why doesn’t He?   I reason that either: a) God didn’t hear my prayer, b) He heard my prayer and ignored it, c) He heard my prayer and answered, Yes later, or d) He heard my prayer and answered, No.   a)   He didn’t hear my prayer   I know God hears my prayers, based on scripture and my own experiences. There are lots of passages in the Bible to back up the fact that God does hear us. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14).   My own experiences even include God hearing my inner, unspoken prayers. I have prayed for safety, while driving in dangerous storms, and He answered my prayer. I have prayed for help and He answered immediately. Actually, I could fill this page and the next with prayers answered, both verbally expressed and those silently directed to God, as proof that He does hear my prayers.   b)   He heard my prayer and ignored it   Given that God hears my prayer, He can either respond, Yes or No. Considering that nothing is impossible for God (Luke 18 ) and He is a just and loving God, there is no reason for Him to ignore me. He calls to me everyday. Since He wants to communicate with me, it would be against His very nature to ignore me. He is merciful and kind, forgiving and gentle. If anything, He wants a relationship with me and so He would not ignore me. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12).   c) He heard my prayer and answered, Yes later   I know that God hears my prayers. I know by His very nature He would not ignore my prayers. (2 Chronicles 7 NIV) So He may be saying, Yes later. God knows the past, the present and the future. He lives in eternity. He knows what is best for me and when. His timing is perfect and I must learn to accept this. I must lift my prayer to Him and then settle back knowing that He is in full control.   It’s just a matter of patience. “We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised” (Hebrews 6:12). Like the time I had to wait for my house to sell. I

Matthew has also juggled the most favorable readings from various avail able editions and translations of the Old Testament to arrive at a reading of each prophecy that will best match the "fulfillments"! [...] Matthew quotes the Greek Septuagint translation of Isa. 7:14 ("Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emannuel"), already a complex and redacted passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah's context the oracle evidently means to assure the chicken-hearted King Ahaz that God would intervene on behalf of Judah in a matter of a very few years, no more than required for a child, soon to be conceived, to grow to the age where he can decline baby food he doesn't like. Assyria will by then have wiped the allies Samaria and Syria off the map. Obviously Isaiah cannot have intended this prophecy to predict events in the life of Jesus more than seven centuries later. Matthew cannot have thought that he did. Like the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he must have imagined the verse contained a hidden message, only newly discernible in light of the advent of Jesus the Messiah. [...] And in this context, it is important to know that the word translated "virgin" in the King James and New International Versions is the Hebrew almah and means the same as the ambiguous word "maiden," not necessarily innocent of sexual intercourse, [...] Matthew, though, chooses to quote not the Hebrew but rather the Septuagint Greek version where the word parthenos is used. This Greek word is usually thought to have the narrower meaning "sexually virginal." Since Matthew seems to want to tell us that Jesus was conceived virginally, miraculously, he prefers using a version of the Bible that seems to contain an appropriate prediction.

We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses.

In his letter of 10 June 1898 to Mohammed Sarfaraz Hussain of Nainital, Swami Vivekananda said: Whether we call it Vedantism or any ism, the truth is that Advaitism is the last word of religion and thought and the only position from which one can look upon all religions and sects with love. I believe it is the religion of the future enlightened humanity. The Hindus may get the credit of arriving at it earlier than other races, they being an older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul, was never developed among the Hindus. On the other hand, my experience is that if ever any religion approached to this equality in an appreciable manner, it is Islam and Islam alone. Therefore, I am firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are the varied expressions of THE RELIGION, which is Oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best. For our motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam—Vedanta brain and Islam body—is the only hope. I see in my mind’s eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body.

Chapter 5: What satan intended for evil, God used for testing (refining). ... This chapter of your life looks like rehab, smells like unemployment, sounds like a hospital, but ask the angels. "Oh, she is in training." God hasn't forgotten you. Just the opposite. He has chosen to train you. ... This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training, the normal experience of children... God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God's holy best. (Hebrews 12:8,10 Msg)

Many ancient peoples believed in a land of shade, where the dead dwell in a twilight underworld. In Hebrew, it is tsalmaveth, the death-shadow. In one of the more peculiar Biblical passages, King Saul, who is in desperate need of advice, orders the witch of Endor to summon the prophet Samuel from the shadows. Samuel appears, but he is vexed at being disturbed and angry at Saul's lack of faith. Things don't go at all well for the King, implying that summoning the dead is not the best way to reach a decision.

Hebrews 12:1 says: "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." God put the joy in our hearts for certain things. And He made us to use the gift's He's given us. Don't back away. Lean in. Become the best you God always intended you to be.

Hebrews 12:1 says: "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." God put the joy in our hearts for certain things. And He made us to use the gift's He's given us. Don't back away. Lean in. Become the best you God always intended you to be.

Hebrews 12:1 says: 'Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.' God put the joy in our hearts for certain things. And He made us to use the gifts He's given us. Don't back away. Lean in. Become the best you God always intended you to be.

If we could actually hear God talking, making His will manifest in words of the Hebrew language, what would He sound like? Since poetry is our best human model of intricately rich communication, not only solemn, weighty, and forceful but also densely woven with complex internal connections, meanings, and implications, it makes sense that divine speech should be represented as poetry. Such speech is directed to the concrete situation of a historical audience, but the form of the speech exhibits the historical indeterminacy of the language of poetry, which helps explain why these discourses have touched the lives of millions of readers far removed in time, space, and political predicament from the small groups of ancient Hebrews against whom Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and their confreres originally inveighed.

My fear is that, perhaps without even realizing it, we’ve fallen into the very dangerous habit of neglecting God’s commands in favor of our logic. For example, if I invite the most famous Christian artist to do a concert at my church, I’m sure to get a crowd of people, maybe even some open-minded unbelievers. I can give a gospel presentation in the middle and an altar call at the end, and through a couple hours of work, I’m almost guaranteed to have some kind of positive response. On the other hand, if I commit to becoming like family with a few other believers, I could spend years pouring time and energy into building those relationships, and I have no idea how that is going to affect any unbelievers. I would have to put all my hope in a promise. When I look at those two options, there’s no question which one makes more sense in the flesh. Many people stop right there and make their decision. But I would ask you to consider: • Does marching around a city seven times and blowing trumpets sound like the most effective way to conquer a city? • Does a little shepherd boy with a slingshot sound like the best candidate to defeat a giant warrior? This list could be expanded at length, but you get the point. God often asks people to pursue strategies that don’t make the most logical sense. If they did make sense to us, we wouldn’t need faith. And without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6) God’s ways are not our ways. He has not asked us to strategize; He has asked us to obey. It seems simple, so why haven’t we obeyed? I can’t speak for you, but I know what usually keeps me from staying committed to His plan: disbelief.

Other than family, I believe we as leaders need four people in our lives: A friend to have fun together. “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). Don’t miss this vital relationship. An advocate to look out for our best interests and one who will open their mouth when we need something (Proverbs 31:8–9). A coach to help guide our life and ministry (Hebrews 3:12–13; 10:24–25). A confidant with whom we can be completely honest without consequence (1 John 1:7).

Don’t see your struggle as an interruption to life but as preparation for life. No one said the road would be easy or painless. But God will use your mess for something good. “This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. . . . God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best” (Hebrews 12:8, 10 MSG).

Though we recognize distinct cultural differences across time and place, the commonalities warrant our attention. To think about how these ancient commonalities need to be differentiated from our modern ways of thinking, we can use the metaphor of a cultural river, where the currents represent ideas and conventional ways of thinking. Among the currents in our modern cultural context we would find fundamentals such as rights, privacy, freedom, capitalism, consumerism, democracy, individualism, globalism, social media, market economy, scientific naturalism, an expanding universe, empiricism, and natural laws, just to name a few. As familiar as these are to us, such ways of thinking were unknown in the ancient world. Conversely, the ancient cultural river had among their shared ideas currents that are totally foreign to us. Included in the list we would find fundamental concepts such as community identity, the comprehensive and ubiquitous control of the gods, the role of kingship, divination, the centrality of the temple, the mediatory role of images, and the reality of the spirit world and magic. It is not easy for us to grasp their shape or rationale, and we often find their expression in texts impenetrable. In today’s world people may find that they dislike some of the currents in our cultural river and wish to resist them. Such resistance is not easy, but even when we might occasionally succeed, we are still in the cultural river—even though we may be swimming upstream rather than floating comfortably on the currents. This was also true in the ancient world. When we read the Old Testament, we may find reason to believe that the Israelites were supposed to resist some of the currents in their cultural river. Be that as it may (and the nuances are not always easy to work with), they remain in that ancient cultural river. We dare not allow ourselves to think that just because the Israelites believed themselves to be distinctive among their neighbors that they thought in the terms of our cultural river (including the dimensions of our theology). We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses. When we consider similarities and differences between the ancient cultural river and our own, we must be alert to the dangers of maintaining an elevated view of our own superiority or sophistication as a contrast to the naïveté or primitiveness of others. Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational. Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.

So what is the meaning of the Journey of Life? What if there was no meaning? What if, like Mary Catherine said at the beginning, what if the journey is all that we need, and to just be as present as we can to every moment of that journey, sharing as best we can of the truth of our being? You know, like we say in Hebrew, dayenu—that would be enough for me.

But if we ask whether there was not sonic madness about him, whether his naturally just mind was not subject to some kind of disturbing influence which was not essential to itself, then we ask a very different question, and require, unless I am mistaken, a very different answer. When all Philistine mistakes are set aside, when all mystical ideas are appreciated, there is a real sense in which Blake was mad. It is a practical and certain sense, exactly like the sense in which he was not mad. In fact, in almost every case of his character and extraordinary career we can safely offer this proposition, that if there was something wrong with it, it was wrong even from his own best standpoint. People talk of appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; it is easy to appeal from Blake mad to Blake sane. When Blake lived at Felpham angels appear to have been as native to the Sussex trees as birds. Hebrew patriarchs walked on the Sussex ])owns as easily as if they were in the desert. Some people will be quite satisfied with saying that the mere solemn attestation of such miracles marks it man as a madman or a liar. But that is a short cut of sceptical dogmatism which is not far removed from inipu- dence. Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the n►ad-house. on all the mystics of history. To call a man mad because lie has seen ghosts is in a literal sense religious persecution. It is denying him his full dignity as a citizen because lie cannot be fitted into your theory of the cosmos. It is disfranchising him because of his religion. It is just as intolerant to tell an old woman that she cannot be a witch as to tell her that she must be a witch. In both cases you are setting your own theory of things inexorably against the sincerity or sanity of human testimony. Such dogmatism at least must be quite as impossible to anyone calling himself an agnostic as to anyone calling himself a spiritualist. You cannot take the region called the unknown and calmly say that though you know nothing about it, you know that all its gates are locked. You cannot say, "This island is not discovered yet; but I am sure that it has a wall of cliffs all round it and no harbour." That was the whole fallacy of Herbert Spencer and Huxley when they talked about the unknowable instead of about the unknown. An agnostic like Huxley must concede the possibility of a gnostic like Blake. We do not know enough about the unknown to

in Yiddish or Hebrew-Russian-English or whatever: the word’s nudnik. The best definition I’ve ever heard came from an Israeli professor of archaeology: “It’s a person who is like a woodpecker sitting on your head, all the time pecking you.

There, about four hundred men come to him. First Samuel 22:2 describes them as “those who were in distress or in debt or discontented” (NIV). These are the men he attracts. What an army! Why does he attract these kinds of people? Because David knows his own identity. He’s a man after God’s own heart, and when these discouraged men look at David, they see the very heart of God. David takes those four hundred people, and in about three years’ time, he’s leading an army of six hundred of some of the greatest warriors in Israel’s history. Who are they? Four hundred losers who are now six hundred of the very best. How does he do that? How does a twenty-something-year-old, in that amount of time, take four hundred disenfranchised farmers, shepherds, and God only knows what else and transform them into men so skilled at warfare that they’re listed by their identities and what they can do on the battlefield? They actually become known in Hebrew as the gibborim or the mightiest.

The answer is no, they are not all the same. Yes, they have sixty-six books divided into the Old and New Testament, but the King James, the New King James, the New American Standard, and the New International Version are translations. This means the words are translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages the Bible was written in. The others, such as the Living Bible, The Message, the New English Version, and all the others out there are someone’s interpretation of an existing translation. In other words, these versions are written from the perspective of what the writer or group of writers thinks is meant rather than what the original words of the text were.

that everybody needs to spend two hours with the Lord. What I want you to take away from my story is this: the more time I spend with Him, the more I want. I consider giving God two of the twenty-four hours He has given me each day to be small compared to all He has done for me. God is so good! He loves us, desires us, pursues us, and longs to spend time with us. He wants us to know Him and He wants to know us intimately. We can have just as much of Him in our lives as we want. “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17b-19). My goal is to encourage you to seek Him for yourself and find the joy, peace, and excitement that come from seeking His face and His heart. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). I know many people who have their quiet time and Bible study at night. I know people who do quiet time in the morning and Bible study at night. Your personality will determine what is best for you.

5. The Bible has both a central direction and a rich diversity. Historical scholars tend to stress its diversity, and a serious reading must affirm this richness. This means that not all parts will cohere or agree. The Bible presents us with the treasure of many people in many times and places trying to live and believe faithfully. And we must take care that we are not reductionist because the richness staggers us and will not be contained in our best categories. But theologians also stress the singularity of the Bible. It is, in a clear way, about one thing. There is “one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5–6). Given certain differences, that oneness is characteristic of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament. And we must not trivialize the Bible by fragmenting it into many things in which we miss its central agenda.

Summing Up • Central to the debates about the applicability of Romans 1: 24-27 to contemporary committed gay and lesbian relationships is Paul’s claim that the sexual misbehavior he describes in these verses is “unnatural,” or “contrary to nature.” We must understand the moral logic underlying this claim in order to discern how to apply these verses to contemporary life. • The Greek word that Paul uses for “nature” here (phusis) does not occur in the Septuagint, the early translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Rather, it arises in Jewish discourse after 200 BCE, when Jewish writers make use of it as a Stoic category in order to interpret Jewish ethics to Gentiles. • In the ancient world there were three dimensions to the understanding of nature, and we find each of these reflected in Paul’s use of the word: ° Nature was understood as one’s individual nature or disposition. Paul’s language in Romans 1 thus reflects the ancient notion that same-sex eroticism was driven by an insatiable thirst for the exotic by those who were not content with “natural” desires for the same sex. The ancient world had no notion of sexual orientation. ° Nature was also understood as what contributed to the good order of society as a whole. In this sense, it looks very much like social convention, and many ancient understandings of what is natural, particularly those concerning gender roles, seem quaint at best to us today. ° Nature was also understood in the ancient world in relationship to biological processes, particularly procreation. Paul’s references to sexual misbehavior in Romans 1: 24-27 as “unnatural” spring in part from their nonprocreative character. Yet there is no evidence that people in the ancient world linked natural gender roles more specifically to the complementary sexual organs of male and female, apart from a general concern with the “naturalness” of procreation. • While we as modern persons should still seek a convergence of the personal, social, and physical worlds, just as the ancients did under the category of nature, we must recognize, even apart from the question of same-sex relationships, that this convergence will look different to us than it looked in the ancient world. • The biblical vision of a new creation invites us to imagine what living into a deeper vision of “nature” as the convergence of individual disposition, social order, and the physical world might look like, under the guidance and power of the Spirit of God. This might also entail the cultivation of a vision for how consecrated and committed gay and lesbian relationships might fit into such a new order.

In order to create each one of the New Testament Gospels, some author who spoke and wrote in Greek had to have read a document already written in Aramaic (or possibly Hebrew, although this is unlikely), or possibly sat and listened as one of the Apostles or followers of Christ Jesus related the stories to him in Aramaic and then the author who spoke and wrote in Greek, translated the Aramaic tales into Greek. So, straightaway, you realize that it is impossible that you are reading the exact words of Christ Jesus; the best that you can hope for is that you are reading the best translation of Christ Jesus' words from Aramaic, into Greek and finally into English.

As Arab armies conquered Syria (which had been part of the Roman and Byzantine empires), they found Syriac translations of Greek philosophical works. These writings were translated into Arabic, and for a time they became the foundation of Muslim philosophy. Eventually, they were rejected as being inconsistent with Islam. The mullahs decided that Muslims could accept practical works from the conquered people, but speculative thought was out. Christians, however, had long since made their peace with integrating pagan philosophy with the Bible. In fact, since the time of the early Christian writers, theologians had argued that just as the Hebrew prophets were the Jewish world’s road to the truth best expressed in Christianity, philosophers were the pagan world’s road to that same truth. So when Christian scholars found out about the works of Aristotle in Spain, they began to translate them into Latin, the language of the church and of scholarship. These new texts immediately caused a buzz in the scholarly community, because here was a complete, well-developed worldview that answered all of the key philosophical questions that medieval scholars had grappled with. The only question was how to integrate the “New Aristotle” into the intellectual synthesis already in place with the advent of Platonic humanism.

When the biblical scribes developed, with staggering sophistication, the notion of fidelity to a body of written law, they appear to have realised what the citizens of many countries today are still learning—namely, that when a constitution is not accompanied by a sense of kinship, it's empty and ineffective, and the best way to foster a sense of kinship is through a narrative that preserves and honours the diverse stories of its members.

The church in Corinth had become quite carnal. Paul encouraged them to stay in communion with God and to judge themselves accordingly. Because they hadn't assume their responsibilities, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:30-32 "For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world." God does not punish us out of condemnation. He disciplines us so we may share in His holiness. As Hebrews 12:10-11 says, "For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

The Hebrew word translated here as “God” is “elohim” and elohim is plural, so the first verse of the Bible should actually read: “In the beginning gods created the heaven and the earth.

For if Dagon was now powerless and sightless, perhaps the God of the Hebrews had not been bested after all.

God is the greatest of all. The best teacher you can ever have.

In Exodus 1:8, a new king who does not “know” Joseph ascends the throne of Egypt. Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world, and its king received the best education in the land. Therefore, it is unlikely the king was ignorant of Joseph’s story in Egypt’s history, especially given Joseph’s role in preserving and enriching Egypt during the great famine (Gn 41). Something else must be meant by the king’s failure to “know.” Indeed, yada (the Hebrew word for “know”) has a sense of covenantal relationship. Thus, when Adam “knew” Eve, she became pregnant (Gn 4:1). In addition, ancient covenant treaties used “know” when speaking of diplomatic recognition. Thus, when Egypt’s new Pharaoh refuses to “know” Joseph, it is not a forgotten history lesson, but

John Owen is a well-known theological giant of the Reformation, a prolific writer, church leader, and professor among the English Nonconformists until his death in 1683. One of Owen’s best-known works is his vast and exhaustive commentary on the Book of Hebrews. Despite its popularity and likely due to its size, many are not familiar with Owen’s lengthy discussion of Christ in the Old Testament in Exercitation 10 of the commentary. An “exercitation” was a kind of preliminary guide to understanding various aspects

This verse uses the Hebrew word milacha to refer to work instead of the more common word avoda. Milacha is not truly translatable; it is best understood as creative work—work that produces something.