Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 (Train - Part 4 of 5)

INTRODUCTION

At the basic level, a person needs to ask themselves: "How do I intend to accomplish this goal or by what means will I accomplish this purpose?  Today, I am addressing the training in our text.  Training consists of answering two questions: 1) "How?"  and 2) "Why?"  So what are the actions that need to be performed?  We want to learn how holiness is done or how to make something holy.  That is my primary training task for today.

But there is another part of training that goes beyond just this text.  It cuts all the way down to how we going to read or interpret this text and any other.  So what is my method?  (If you want to look at his more in-depth, simply click my communication blog link on the right side of this page.)



METHOD

So let me say a little (not a lot!) about my method of reading (a part of communication).  Let me begin by saying that my method is both cutting edge and the most common sense.  There needs to be a sense of both the edges of our world's global demands and of the core demands of small town and country life.  We need a tool that is usable by both ends of that spectrum.  I believe that the tool I use meets those demands on both ends of our world.

We today live in a world of not just European or American demands, but a world of worldwide or global demands.  We also though need to make sure we do not lose sight of our local demands either.  That must be a constant tension.  I remember this quote from real estate magazine and a discussion with a world traveler that I met in California: "He who is most at home somewhere, is most at home everywhere".   This quote captures part of the essence of my method.

In 1983, I was introduced to a method for everywhere, called the TEAR method.   Its everywhere, from the latest #s (from 2009) that I am aware of, is to 6909 languages in the world (source: SIL).  The TEAR method was designed as a universal tool to measure up to the demands of facing a multitude of languages.  In biblical studies, the demands of language are between 5 and maybe 10 languages (ex. English, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew ...  Arabic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, etc.)  So you can see that the method that I was introduced to in 1983 had a demand load of much higher proportions - 1000xs higher at least.  The challenge and demands of more languages, I am convinced, were the mother of invention for the TEAR method.  It was designed so that a missionary (a cutting edge global messenger) could be "most at home everywhere".

In 1983, I was also introduced to a method for somewhere, called the ARCing method.  It's somewhere was going from Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew to English.  It was heavily immersed in the language of English.  The demands were essentially making sure that our English translation was a good one from these original languages.  The isolated somewhere was even more narrow than English, it was specifically American English. I think that sometimes the most elusive location is finding where in language we are "most at home somewhere".  This is tremendously demanding too, because it says that we have to narrow that somewhere down to one place and not a multitude of places.   It was designed for the demand that a preacher (a home schooled local messenger) could be "most at home somewhere".  

My method for reading the text of Scripture with the goal of it speaking to me, came full circle in late 2013 and in early 2014, so that laying out the common sense level became a real passion for me.  It also is one half of why a publisher is interested in publishing a book I hope to see published yet this year.  I think that I have found that somewhere where you and I are most at home, when it comes to language and communication. The best thing about it is that it agrees with the idea of being most at home everywhere.   In fact, I would say that both the TEAR method and the ARCing method essentially have not seen that "most at home" place as the most essential demand there is in our world right now that overnight became global.  Too often the church is trying to keep up with the world without keeping up their home.  So today you will get to see me use the most at home part of language to get at the definition and meaning of holy through Isaiah 6.

Isaiah 6

Remember he who is most at home somewhere is most at home everywhere.

Here is where I am most at home and I think you will find it is also where you are most at home.  It is the place in language you frequent the most.  That place must be our starting point before we can become most at home everywhere.  So I will be doing my best to begin from there.

Revelation 4


[this piece will have to be revisited due to Good Friday and me having a shorter day to work on things as a result.  That is my tradition and I'm sticking to it.]










In Christ,

Jon

Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Both Better Through Isaiah 6 & Revelation 4 (Total - Part 3 of 5)

When it comes to language, it is important to realize that some words get used extremely frequently. Sometimes due to that frequency, we take them for granted.  In reading the scholarly articles or books written about the Bible, you frequently find writers trying to find the next seldom used word that needs to be better defined.  In the business world, they would call this looking for the unique rather than the common. I've come to the conclusion that sometimes we spend way too much time on the infrequently used words in the Bible text and way too little time on the frequently used ones.  "Blessed" and "holy" are not themselves the most commonly found words in the biblical text, but does that have to mean we cannot ground their meanings in those that are the most common?  I think that the correct answer is that we CAN ground the meaning of blessed and holy in common sense language.  We just have to do it.

What this means is that I and many of us have to break some old habits in reading a text of Scripture.  My tendency is to look for the key unique words in a text, but to ignore those that are more widely known or common.  We see this too in an exhaustive concordance, where words like "and", "the", "but", "a" and many others like them are relegated to an appendix.  We also see this in older lexicons (and maybe even some newer ones), where at one time in the history of their creation, only the less well-known words were included and the most commonly words were left out.  The thinking was: "Why have a dictionary for those?".  Even in a children's picture dictionary that I own, the word "strong" gets a picture dedicated to its definition, but the word "the" does not have a picture assigned to it.  The authors seem to assume that a child will grasp the meaning of "the" from a couple of example sentences.  

This situation reminds me of the Biblical principle that "the greatest shall be the least and the least shall be the greatest".  It also reminds me of another principle where Jesus warned people that "what you have done to the least of these, you have done to me".  These principles seem to apply only to people, but what if they also extend to our words?  Are we paying a big price for not paying attention to the common words as much as the special words?  Do those who read the Bible as scholars need a reprimand like the chiding Lincoln gave to the elite politicians that he understood the democratic principle to mean to pay attention to the common people, because there were so many of them?  Do we need to do the same with the least of the words in the text that are so incredibly frequent?  It is my view that we do.

Some very scholarly writing from a cutting edge linguistic model called "cognitive linguistics", in paraphrasing their point, says that the words we see or hear more frequently than others become more entrenched in our minds and tend to shape more our way of thinking more and even effect things more at the expense of the less frequent and therefore the less entrenched in our thinking.  In other words, these least words are the words that are greater than the greatest words.  The great words, the last heard at the spelling bee or the words hardest to define on the ACT or SAT are in fact the least when it comes to grounding or entrenching our views.

So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in English:

the, a(n)
on, as (so)

and, but (not)
with, at

I (be), to (not)
of (have), had

by (do), use
for, said

this, that
or, each

So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Greek:

    

So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Aramaic:




So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Hebrew:



This is how I will be able to approach a biblical text in a way that is not only healthy, but also incredibly grounded or entrenched (in a good sense!).  the good news in all of this is that this will make the common person and all of those above them in expertise to have a common ground from which to begin.  Right now what happens is the expert is given the advantage and also the loopholes to escape accountability for their ways of thinking.


[this deserves a lot more work and it will get it and so will Isaiah 6 ]

In Christ,

Jon

Holy: Understanding Better the Resistance to Changing Definitions

I love the following opening lines from Thomas Paine's Common Sense:

     Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable
     to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial
     appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.  But
     tumult soon subsides.  Time makes more converts than reason.

Perhaps the view that I have expressed that holy by definition means moral wholeness does not seem like much in relationship to the long history of people assuming it means set apart, but as Paine says custom and its outcry of defense will eventually subside.  The need for time as well as reason is not an optional need.  People do need soak time with new ideas before they will set aside old ideas. 

I also agree that reason means something less than more time.  The reason for my position on the definition of holy is solid in regard to reason, but time honored custom is very hard to break.  So let's not be influenced so much by custom and by the superficial appearance of what is right.  Let's consider other options and then give time for these options to prove themselves right in more than a superficial way. 

John A. Lee's comments, as a biblical scholar on the status of Biblical lexicons, as sometimes preservers of tradition more than a producer of higher quality definitions is worthy of consideration.  He too warns about the superficial appearance of authority by the sheer number of lexicons that say the same thing.  But quantity is not the same as quality. 

Perhaps in time, Lee's wisdom and that of Paine's common sense will be taken more seriously and what first appeared right as a definition might then also be considered wrong.  That though will take time.  I only hope not too much longer. 

In Christ,

Jon