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

INTRODUCTION

I just got off an exciting conversation with two guys, who I consider to be among the best friends that I have. They meet together with a group of guys once per month to discuss some of the more difficult and more valuable pieces of Christian writing, so I had a chance to have a phone conversation with both of them after their meeting this morning (4/19/14).  They are both pretty smart.  They gave me some sound advice.
Moses was pretty smart as well, but his father-in-law gave him some valuable smart advice: divide up this work load that you are carrying and handle only the intellectually more difficult cases yourself.  He was advising Moses to limit his personal scope.  This is certainly good advice.  But it is easy to overlook what had to come first.  Before you limit your scope, as I was advised this morning, you have to make sure the whole scope is seen and covered!  It is through seeing the whole scope and seeing our own limitations that we can best follow Jethro's advice.

Christian education as well as public education are at a dismal place right now.  Despite greater and greater dollars going into the system and some individual highlights, there is no program in education right now that is lighting up the score board except on a more local basis.  It appears too that these sometimes great efforts are also reaching a fatigue state.  Changing the curriculum every 5 years is not cutting it.  What can we do about this?

I think we need to follow Jethro's advice in a 21st century way.   So let's first figure out the B.C. advice he gave to Moses before converting it to A.D. advice to us.  First, to bridge from one to the other, you need to buttress each end of the bridge.   Let's start then with Exodus 18:

¹³ And so it was, on the next day, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening. ¹⁴ So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?”¹⁵ And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God. ¹⁶ When they have a difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another; and I make known the statutes of God and His laws.”

¹⁷ So Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing that you do is not good. ¹⁸ Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself. ¹⁹ Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God. ²⁰ And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. ²¹ Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. ²² And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you. ²³ If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people will also go to their place in peace.”
²⁴ So Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. ²⁵ And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people: rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. ²⁶ So they judged the people at all times; the hard cases they brought to Moses, but they judged every small case themselves.
²⁷ Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way to his own land.

There are some critical statements in these instructions:

[I solved a major problem today through this post.  The work I did only has to wait today due to my other job and due to my needing to do some technological stuff to get my materials displayed in a more professional manner.  But this will end up being one of my best posts in terms of the common sense level.]

In Christ, 

Jon

Holy: Understanding It Better through Leviticus 19 (Total Wholes - part 3 of 5)

Totaling up the parts of the process for interpreting a passage of Scripture is very important.  It is always important to keep all the parts in mind, even as you work on individual parts.  The individual parts that go into the total in this case are: 1) translate, 2) transfer, 3) train, and 4) teach.

As each of these is brought together the goal is to form a single fabric that points to things like the themes of Leviticus and how the parts of the book are arranged together.

What is a bit disappointing when you read the literature regarding Leviticus is how quickly nearly everyone sees the singular theme of holiness as primary.  (I myself did the same following their lead in the past.)  There is a sense in which much of commentary is commentary on commentary and not original research, listening, or digging. 

I find one part of a sentence in Leviticus 19 to be very telling because a part of this sentence is repeated over and over in the chapter without repeating the holiness part.  In Leviticus 19:2d, we read: "For I Yahweh your God am holy".  Then one of my best professors at outlining a passage, dr. Allen P. Ross, points out that there are four sets of four built throughout the chapter around "I am Yahweh" or "I am Yahweh your God".  So with this repeating structure in the chapter what does it tell us about the theme of Leviticus?  Could there be something more important than holiness?

Notice I say "could there be?" not that "there is" at least quite yet.  Now that there is a proposal of another possible theme (along the lines of worship as a theme), I would like to clarify a possible idea. 

For many years (both unconsciously and consciously), I have treasured the theme in a book titled, Who Am I?  I have, for many years, considered the basic question, "Who?" to be possibly the greatest question that can be asked in a variety of forms whether it be: "Who are you [God, etc.]?" or  "Who am I?" or "Who are they?".  God's personal name would seem to address the question of "Who?" on the most basic level.  It is how we often times introduce ourselves to another or what we first ask them about themselves. 

The  name "Yahweh" is unique.  It is called, "the name about all names".  That raises the question of "Why is it the name above all names (if it is not only because it is the name of God)?"  So asking in another way, what lies behind its exalted status? 

I would like to make another proposal, but again not necessarily a definite answer at this point.  It is something to meditate on rather than something to swallow on first bite.  It is this idea.  What if the Israelites on hearing God's name regularly recalled God's words to Moses, when Moses asks who he should say sent him, "I am who I am".  In answering the question, "Who are you?", there could not be a better answer.  It even includes "who" in the response!

In that case, God's exalted name (or the integrity of his name) could be even more of a theme in Leviticus than holy.  I will only suggest here, as well as my other suggestions, that blessing might first get its meaning from integrity.  The question that remains is whether on further testing these possibilities hold up or whether they fail to show any possibility. 

You may in the end, if you are a Christian, find yourself singing:

Yahweh Is the Sweetest Name I Know

but, of course,

Jesus ("Yahweh saves") is Too the Sweetest Name I Know. 

May God bless you in your meditations on the possibilities of these proposals.  And may you also not be too limited by only the ideas you have heard many times before. 


In Christ,

Jon

Holy: Understanding it Better Through the Cart Before Horse and the Level without Plumb

Conceal and Carry

I can no longer support "conceal and carry" by committing two different mistakes.  First, by"putting the cart in front of the horse" and second, by "measuring level without measuring plumb".  Here is what I mean.  It is not helpful for us to conceal the meanings of the top three most important words in the Bible and then carry that Bible with its incorrect definitions to others. 


Both mistakes conceal the meanings of holy, blessed,Yahweh and to some extent the top 20-25 words in the Bible in terms of importance.  So what do I mean? 

The Cart Before the Horse

The cart before the horse picture should be pretty clear.  There are lots of humorous photos on-line illustrating its absurdity.  I tried to find a picture of a trailer in front of a truck to modernize the analogy, but it seems we are all too smart to make that mistake in our day.  So why is this allowed in studying the meaning of words and by the people called lexicographers who put together lexicons? 

[photo insert]

Here is what I have observed.  Scholars when they have read some of the older writings on the meaning of words have not been careful to separate: 1) meanings, 2) implications, and 3) significance.  This is a rule in Dr. Robert H. Stein's A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible.  He was one of my best teachers during my college and seminary education.  Stein's "meanings" is what people like the translator Eugene Nida mean by "definition".  The other two are not definitions.  The reason I am concerned about holy and the other two words is because of their significance to the meaning of the whole text of the Bible, but that does not indicate their definitions.  Likewise neither does their implications define the word. 

For example, we separate people in a hospital because of the danger of the well becoming ill through at least some of the sick.  We do not separate people due to an arbitrary rule of separation, but rather we separate the unhealthy from the healthy in some cases to keep the healthy from also becoming unhealthy.  The central point and definition that needs to be known is the difference between healthy and unhealthy.  The definition of healthy is not separate and yet it seems to me that we have defined holy through the same error.  When Rashi (a early Jewish teacher) says that holy means separate, does he mean it implies separate or that it is defined by separate.  Second, has he himself switched an implication into the role of definition.  You see the horse is the meaning, the implication is the cart, and the farmer or whoever is driving operating this machinery is the one who can explain the significance of what the horse and cart are for. 

The Level without the Plumb

When a carpenter measures, they measure both vertically the walls to see if they are straight (plumb) and also the floors to insure they are straight (level).  They would never consider it adequate to operate in building a structure without both vertical and horizontal measurements combining for a convergence of perspective.  It simply makes no sense, because these meanings have been concealed by not seeing the difference between a horse and its cart. 

[insert photo]

What I have discovered is that the meaning of 1)Yahweh, 2) blessed, and 3) holy have been concealed by the mistaken move of substituting the implications of a word for the definition of a word.  Holy just happens to be one of the most important (#3). 

[A work in process as I have time.  Thank you for your patience.]

Jon

Holy: Understanding it Better Through Hesychius

You have come to this site to find the meaning of holy.  I will not disappoint you in that regard, but before I give an answer to that question you need to know that the definition of holy or qadosh (Hebrew) or hagios (Greek) requires a little extra research, to put it very kindly.  Fortunately, the high quality options are only three.  They are: 1) moral wholeness, 2) pure, or 3) set apart.  The lexicographer Hesychius is not a household name, but he has been very important in trying to determine the meaning of holy.  His lexicon written around the third to fourth century time range is regarded as a great treasure for determining the meaning of many Greek words.  In this case, we are talking about the meaning of hagioi or hagios.  I want to tell you what I have found in examining the evidence from his lexicon. 


[Under construction]


Sincerely,

Jon