Dead Sea Scrolls online

Here it is–the official Dead Sea Scrolls site:
http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

You can look at the five most important scrolls: The great Isaiah Scroll, the War Scroll, the Rule of the Community, the Temple Scroll, and the Commentary on Habakkuk.

Thanks to Kasey Portenier and Karre Schaeffer for giving me the tip.

Leadership (topic of choice)

I am studying leadership for my research paper and I think that there are a lot of important things that we can learn from the leadership of the founders of our Christian faith. The first thing is that their hearts and minds were focused on God’s will. They had a heart that sought after God before anything else and because of that, they were able to be successful. When their heart strayed after worldly things, there were consequences for example Moses is not able to enter the promised land after leading the people for all that time. Seeking God first in our positions of leadership is what is going to be blessed by Him, not seeking our own agendas. Humility is another thing that is key for leaders to possess. Having humility means that you are not seeking your own glory, that you don’t need the recognition, and that you can give the credit to other people. It also means that you are willing to admit when you have made a mistake even if it means having to tell those under you that you were wrong. Delegation is vital to leaders. Moses knew it and he appointed people to do the work that he didn’t need to do before he got so overwhelmed by the burden of the people that he wore out. Solomon and other kings also knew to establish counsels of people around them to command their militaries and ensure that their kingdom is running smoothly in all areas. If a leader takes on everything by themselves, there is no way that they will last for long in that position.

Authorship

The discussion of authorship is one that I am not really good to argue with over because my answer is, “I really do not care who the ascribed author is, what matters to me is that it is in my hands as the Word of God today.” This may not be the best attitude and I think there is a lot to say for knowing that Paul was the author of so many of the letters in the New Testament, but when it comes down to disputing who wrote this verse or chapter in the book, I don’t find the need to argue. I would even argue that some of the authors of the books of the Bible didn’t write them down themselves but orated them to a scribe. So in that sense, who is the author of the book? The man who spoke the words, or the one who wrote them down?

Hebrew Language

I was studying some dictionaries for the research paper that we have to write and I am really finding some interesting things about the Hebrew language. First of all, I wish that I would have taken Hebrew during my undergrad work. I thought about it because I have always been interested in language but just never jumped in and did it. The thing that I like about studying the Hebrew language (and the Greek for that matter) is we can learn what the root is of so many words that make up the foundation of the theology of our Christian faith. So often I just take a word to mean what I have been taught but when I go through and examine the original contexts and alternate uses, it gives it so much more depth and meaning. I think the word studies are a very useful tool when doing exegetical work and something that I will use from now on. The Hebrew language was something that I was intimidated by when we tried to learn the alphabet for class and it still intimidates me a little because I really don’t know how to read or pronounce any of it, but I have a new appreciation for it nonetheless.

Sacrifices in Temple vs Daily Prayer and Study of Bible.

Old Testament is very different from New Testament. In this post I want to share a few differences that I’ve learned from Shaye J.D. Cohen book– From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. First of all, Judaism was a religion of one nation, in other words Judaism was a nationality rather than a religion. If one sinned, the whole nation was punished. One of numerous examples would be Achan’s sin ( Joshua 7:1). Achan took devoted things from Jericho and God’s anger burned against the whole Israel. They were addressed as a nation by prophets and individuals as Anna, mother of Samuel, king David and others are considered heroes of faith and exceptions. They also did not accept converts, did they?  They worshiped as a nation in one place, Temple, and through sacrifices. I wonder if an average Jew had a daily prayer? I doubt that an average Jew read Torah as we today read Bible. To sum up, Old Testament religion emphasizes collective, views people as a part of the nation, and the nation had covenant with God . New Testament emphasizes individual as oppose to collective and an individual, not the whole nation, repents, accepts Christ as Savior and thus establishes new covenant with God. Every person has his own covenant with God.

What do you think ? Comments invited.

You Might Be . . .

If you have ever said,

“Do you spell that with one quail chick or two?”

If you have ever mowed your back yard and found a pyramid …

If you ever found your brother preparing a mummy in your bath tub …

If your church has a ministry to the boatless …

You might be an Egyptian redneck.

See Bad Bird for some resources for Egyptian hieroglyphs.

What does biblical archaeology teach us? (wild card)

As my husband chose to go into biblical archaeology, I had grand visions of finding the ark of the covenant (or at least the bones of Balaam’s donkey). Indiana Jones knew dozens of languages, was able to make earth-shattering discoveries in civilizations from the Mayans, to Israelites, to remote Indian civilizations. This was going to be an exciting life!

The reality of biblical archaeology has been exciting, but in a very different way. I have learned to find joy from uncovering a water channel in a dusty, remote part of Jordan, where a dig on that site has continued for more than 20 years, and to let go of my need for sensational finds.

In the “glory days” of biblical archaeology in the 19th century, large finds that were spectacular were the goal of a dig. The University of Chicago Museum (http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum) holds monstrously large and impressive finds from the ancient Near East culled from the rubble of that era of archaeology. But in the desire to find the spectacular, they missed much of what we are learning from archaeology today.

Critics of the early pioneers of Biblical Archaeology complained that men like Albright went to the holy land with “a Bible in one hand and a trowel in another”. (See the works of Bill Dever, for example.) Many of the early pioneers were men of faith, hoping in some sense to “prove the Bible”. Even if we can’t do that with archaeology (see the subsequent arguments over the dating of the sight of Jericho done by Kenyon), what can we, as Christians learn from archaeology?

One thing archaeology can do is make your study of the Bible much richer. If you look at a work like Dr. Fiensy’s, Jesus, the Galilean , he explains insights about the world of Jesus that are very valuable to Christians. What did the average man in Galilee eat, do, wear, worry about, fear, get sick from? Who were the people living in the first century? What was Jesus’ human experience and perspective? Archaeology helps to provide an clearer historical picture of a particular culture and time period that makes Jesus’ teachings and the words of the apostles more meaningful.

Even if the ark is not found, an archaeologist who will delight at exploring the remains of a first century sewer (Dr. Fiensy), can give us valuable insight and information that can make our understanding of the Bible much richer.

PS If you are in Chicago, the Oriental Institute at the Univ of Chicago is amazing!

Cathy

The Name Jehovah

I am sorry that this is the first essay that I’ve placed as a “new post”.  I am new to blogging and did not understand how to post my essays.  So, you can find my other essays as comments in other sections.  Sorry for the confusion.  Anyway, here’s my post on the name “Jehovah”:

In the Judaism 101 article, “The Name of G-d,” the author wrote: “Some people render the four-letter Name YHVH as ‘Jehovah, but this pronunciation is particularly unlikely. The word ‘Jehovah’ comes from the fact that ancient Jewish texts used to put the vowels of the Name ‘Adonai’ (the usual substitute for YHVH) under the consonants of YHVH to remind people not to pronounce YHVH as written .”  The name, Jehovah, was created around the sixteenth century A.D. when Christian theologians were unsure with what to do with the Tetragrammaton, i.e. YHVH. Certain scholars, either through ignorance or by deliberate design, combined the consonants JHVH (or YHVH) with the vowels of the substitute word Adonay. This resulted in the creation of the name Jehovah.  According to my research, this  is the true origin of the name Jehovah.

                Many people in the modern church and world, however, use the name Jehovah on a regular basis.  But is anything wrong with using the name Jehovah for God. According to James E. Smith at Florida Chastain College, the word Jehovah is a nonsense name that has no biblical support.  In writing about the creation of the word “Jehovah,” Dr. Smith writes: “It is the result of an unholy wedding between the consonants of one word and the vowels of a totally different word.” Obviously he believes that using the word “Jehovah” is ignorant and wrong.  He goes on to say: “It is unnatural and unscholarly to combine the vowels of the substitute word and the consonants of the written word. . . . It is misleading to imply by usage that Jehovah is the name of God when in fact Jehovah is a nonsense name.”  Dr. Smith argues that God was very concerned about the proper use of His name in the Old Testament, and that calling Him by the man-created name of Jehovah is disrespectful. 

                In reading this article and the writings of Dr. Smith, I was wondering what the members of our class thought.  Does anyone else feel it is wrong to use the name Jehovah?  I understand that it was not the original name for God, but I really have not taken a side on the issue.   Just in case you were wondering, the NIV never uses the word , but other well-known English translations do.  The American Standard Version of 1901 and the King James version of 1611 both use the name Jehovah occasionally.   I have even had people argue that using the name Jehovah is proper because it is found in Scripture ( the King James Translation).  This just showed me how translations do not always capture the complete meaning of a foreign text.

Inspired Authorship.

The discussion of authorship has been one question that has not gone away over the centuries, no matter what the literary context. What impresses me so much about the Scriptures is that even without clarity or confirmation, the canon has come together and apparently handled both textual and historical criticism.

Even though the question of authorship is one for discussion, there seems to be a clear consensus on the concept of authorship. F. F. Bruce in , “What Do We Mean By Biblical Inspiration?” Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute 78 (1946): 125. states “The Biblical writers were not secretaries or penmen; they were authors in the full sense of the word, yet authors under the overruling guidance of God the Holy Spirit, the auctor primarius. No adequate parallel can be found to the phenomenon of Biblical inspiration, unless those theologians are right who find an analogy to it in the hypostatic union of the divine and human in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

My thought is that the first readers / hearers of the OT canon recognized it as the inspired Word of God and that in some cases the identify of authorship slipped behind the curtain. Their recognition of this was probably keen, but it the context of the moment it may have not been that big of a deal since it was so recognizable as the inspired Word of God. I believe that at the end of the day, we will be OK even if we do not know who the “auctor primarius” is or if it even turns out to be someone other than who we thought that it should be.

Covenants

Going through the Old Testament, something that has always stood out has been the covenants God made with his people. God made several covenants with his people starting in the Garden of Eden saying that he would bless them and that he wanted them to multiply and be fruitful, and then with Noah that he would never destroy the Earth again by flood, to Abraham and blessing him and making a great nation come from him, to Moses and the Laws. Each covenant is unique and definitely interesting in its own right.

Starting in the beginning, the very first covenant made was in the Garden of Eden. He told man that he was to “multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food” (Gen. 1: 28-30). “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’” (Gen 2: 16-17). The covenant in the Garden of Eden was the first of its kind and unique in that God stepped down and walked and talked and communed with his people, and all he asked was that they allow God to stay in control, i.e. not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The next covenant God made was with Adam. After the fall things were just a little bit different. Many things changed and had to change when the fall happened, including: 1) a curse on the serpent, 2) the first promise of a redeemer coming through the line of Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David, 3) a change in the women’s role and relationship to man including their bondage and subservience to his headship, and pain in childbirth 4) the loss of the Garden of Eden as a dwelling place and light work becoming a heavy and toilsome burden because of a cursed earth, 5) inevitable sorrow and pain in life, and finally 6) a shortened life span and eventual death. This covenant is one built on sadness at the loss of what could have been a loss of a personal relationship with God in which you truly walked with him and did life with him. However, it showed God’s ultimate plan; the plan of redemption was always there from the very beginning. The Messiah was not an afterthought or even plan B, it was plan A, and how God saw his people being able to come into his presence again.

The next covenant God made was with Noah. God could not find anyone besides Noah and his family that were righteous and living for him in the entire earth. God was disappointed in his creation and wanted to wipe them out completely and start over with a remnant. This covenant established the sanctity of human life and that man was responsible to protect this life even to the point of death, because man was made in the image of God. The covenant also established that the earth would never be destroyed by flood again and that even the earth would not be cursed beyond what it already was. Also, man’s relationship and dominion over the animals of the earth was confirmed again, though it was not to be a harmonious relationship as in the Garden of Eden by any means. Finally, the rainbow is placed in the sky as a reminder to God of this covenant that he made “with all the flesh of the earth” (Gen 9:17).

Then God made a covenant with Abraham, that was then restated and confirmed both to his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. This covenant included a great nation coming from Abraham that would outnumber the stars in the heavens, that his name would be great and the he would be a blessing, that God would bless those who bless him and curse those who cursed him, and that all the people on earth will be blessed through him. God also said that he was the one that brought Abraham out of the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to give him this land to take possession of it. Interestingly enough this same covenant, with no real change whatsoever is again stated to both Isaac in Genesis 26: 1-5, and again to Jacob in Genesis 28:10-15. God had not forgotten this covenant and was seeing to it that the descendents of Abraham continued in bringing the promises of the covenant to fruition.

The next defining covenant given in the Old Testament is with Moses, and unlike the other covenants this one is clearly conditional. This covenant is connected with the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, and the Levitical priesthood. “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19: 5-6a). If the nation of Israel obeyed God’s commands and kept his covenant with them then they would be a treasured possession to him. However, if they did not keep his covenant then God would curse them and remove his blessing from them, in an attempt to bring them back to him—hence the deliverance into the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

The final covenant in the Old Testament was with David, a man after God’s own heart. This covenant establishes that a temple will be built in Israel, that the kingdom would be perpetual, a throne—i.e. royal authority in the line of David, chastisement on sons for their disobedience, and finally the promise of the Messiah coming from the line of David is confirmed. Interestingly enough though, even though David did not always follow God perfectly this covenant remained intact, for example David had too much blood on his hands to build the temple, but God promised that David’s son Solomon would build it.

These covenants are interesting, not only in who God made them with but also that God kept making covenants with his people. Personally, after so many times of the nation and the people messing up and breaking the covenant, I would have given up on them. However, thankfully I am not God and he has a lot more patience with us when it comes to bringing his plans to fruition.