Holy: Understanding It and other Great Things Better

You've heard of the "Greatest Show on Earth".  You've probably also heard of the "Greatest Commandment".   The thing in common between both of these is "Greatest".  My quest to determine the definition (the primary meaning) of holy has a lot to do with the idea of "Greatest".  I thought at one time that "holy" might be the most important word in the Bible and in one sense it is .  Well, it is one half of what is "greatest", so not way off.  It is clearly as important as "holy, holy, holy" indicates in both Isaiah and Revelation.  There are two words though that eclipse it in importance and they are:  "Yahweh" and "blessed".  So "holy" is for me the third greatest word in the Bible. 

Let me add a bit more to this to drive home my point about holy's position of greatness or importance.  "Yahweh" as in "holy is Yahweh" is more important than "holy".  Also  "Yahweh" as in "Blessed be His Name" is more important than "blessed".  We also see holy combined with blessed in in "blessed and sanctified" or "blessed and holy" as found in Genesis 2:1-3 and in Revelation.   What is missed is that in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek" there is a pattern in the order that shows importance. 

In Hebrew as in Greek, the "greater" precedes the "lesser".  That makes perfect sense even in English, but there is a VERY GREAT distinction that must be drawn.  In English we often place a greater in front of a lesser in the sense of a greater number and a lower number on the same level plane.  So we place 5 ahead of 4 on a numerical scale of what is greater.  That is not the way "greater" and "lesser" and even "greatest" is being used in Hebrew, (likely Aramaic), or Greek.  In this case it would be a good idea to draw from our memory of geometry where there is a vertical axis and a horizontal axis.  In Hebrew, the idea is that of the "greater" corresponding to the vertical line and the "lesser" corresponding to the horizontal and the "greatest" corresponding to where the two lines intersect with one another.  At that point the "greatest" may be at the point of 0,0 rather than out at 5.1, etc. 

I first got wind of this in the early 80s from an article on righteousness and justice and learning that they were not the same thing.  This was first brought to my attention by a Hebrew scholar, but he never fully convinced me as to what they each meant in that case.  That came 20 years later, when I was working in carpentry and noticed that Isaiah pointed out that righteousness corresponded to the plumb line and justice to the level line in carpentry.  This was an astonishing confirmation of what the Hebrew scholar had convinced me of 20 years prior, that the two words were not entirely synonymous.  This great scholar and my homely parable of carpentry experience verified a greater grasp of what these two words meant in definition.  I also learned that when both righteous and justice were meant then the Hebrew for justice was used and then translated into judgment to mean both together.  This was the practice that the early KJV translators saw practiced in the Old Testament by the Jews or Hebrews.

There is more to this.  In Greek, they refer to narrow definitions for a word and broad definitions.  This discussion is found in Aristotle among others.  Righteousness would be a narrow definition.  Justice would be a narrow definition.  Judgment would be the broad use of the word for justice meaning both righteousness and justice altogether. 

I think the thing that is holding the church back from anything "Great" happening like a "Great Awakening", another "The Reformation", another incredible revival, or another wonderful renewal movement is a failure to know and teach what things are great and what words point to that greatness in the Bible.  The last example I would like to use is that the Bible in the opening creation story speaks of great things God created.  Among then were the "greater light" to the light the day and the "lesser lights" to light the night.  To me the greatest thing about each is that the combination of them both is what makes God's creation the "greatest" we can imagine or think.  I hope and pray that the church especially can find its way back to the greatest things with admiration for both the greater and the lesser.  We need to pay attention to those things that are truly greatest and avoid the distractions of lesser things in life.  Poor judgment has become too common.  Thank you for reading my humble thoughts that attempt to point others to the greatest things. 


In Christ,

Jon

[I will be re-visiting this and making improvements as possible.12/11/13]
  

Holy: Understanding it Better Through the Biblical Method of Defining Words

I doubt that I am the only one to ever have this question: "Why doesn't the Bible have its own internal dictionary?"  For the English language there are a host of dictionaries available to consult, if a person does not understand a particular word.  Why does the Bible lack the tool of its own internal reliable dictionary?  But what if it does have one?  What if we are looking for the wrong kind of dictionary? 

Using the example of dictionaries for the English language, the majority are written in a format where words define other words.  Good examples are: Webster's New World Dictionary and Black's Law Dictionary.  But there are dictionaries that follow a different format.  I could point out a host of them on-line, but for my examples I'd like to look at my own dictionary shelf.  It contains The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, The Magic World of Words: A Very First Dictionary, and Ultimate Visual Dictionary.  For my purposes, I want to point out that the last two use illustrations or pictures as a primary way to define words.  This raises the question whether the Bible could have its own format for a dictionary that does not follow only the format of words defining words.  It doesn't use pictures either, but this does not rule out word pictures. 

A number of years ago I ran across a scholarly article that ruled out the idea that the Hebrew words zedekah (translated as righteousness) and mishpat (translated as justice or judgment depending on the context) are synonymous.  I mentioned this to a Christian teacher, who travels worldwide, and when he tried to present the same idea in Germany, Lutherans there protested that Luther saw them as synonymous.  So how are we to solve this problem?


The first clue came for me from my experience of working in carpentry and reading in Isaiah that righteousness is like the plumb line while justice is like the horizontal leveling line.   The top picture of a plumb line level combo is especially relevant, since it is very similar to the tool thought to have been used in building the pyramids in Egypt. 

Since that time I have read a similar comparison from the context of streams and rivers found in the book of Amos.  Here's one way it is translated:

This is no surprise, since he was previously a shepherd and would have needed to water his flocks.  Finally, I recently ran across another example of comparison using the example of light in Psalm 37.  This comparison comes the field of astronomy or from the observation of daylight 

Another easy way to think of the distinction between righteousness and justice is to think of the difference between the answers to two similar, yet different questions.  They are:

How many?  (Quantity)

How much?  (Quality)

Note here that the quantity is this passage is: "light" as one, but it also has a quality: "As the noonday [light]".  The difference between the two things are clear since the comparisons are not exactly the same.   The point is their difference though they are both measures or amounts.  Can you clearly see this?  "Light" and "noonday" are distinct and not synonymous though related. 

FINALLY, a light shone brightly in my own mind.  What if the Bible instead of defining words by other words, defines words by concrete comparisons that are well-known?

 

This also explains Jesus' motivation with parables to insure people understood the meaning of his words.  It also agrees with the concept that I learned years ago that a knower and a teacher are distinct from each other and also a complement to each other.  The knower is focused on experience or the referent  (thing referred to in communication) and the teacher is focused on words. Ideally in communication the two work in tandem.  It would seem that the Bible's definitions for righteousness and justice do just that.  It ties the real world to the vocabulary world. 

So now part of my task is to find the contexts that connect Yahweh and holy to a comparison much as righteousness and justice are compared to no less than three concrete things.  This is now a critical part of my quest for a definitive definition for holy.  May the righteous and just God of all eternity bless your day. 

 
In Christ,

Jon