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it is hard to understand the Gospels and the Acts without knowing something about the Old Testament.  There are some groups who think all they need is the New Testament, which is like reading the last half of the book without having read the first half.

Especially at this time of year, during the time of the passion and Pentecost.  It is important to realize the context of what is happening.  First, there are the two groups of Jews.  The Pharisees and the Sadducees were two warring factions in Jewish society.  The Sadducees were the secular authority, partners of Rome.  The Pharisees were the religious group, almost fanatical in their devotion to faith.

The Pharisees did not like Jesus because he claimed to be God.  They had very little to do with his seizure and trial, except that they did not file any protest or challenge anything that happened.  Later, when the Sadducees begin the persecution of the Christians, the Pharisees protest to Rome.  We still have a record that when James, the brother of Jesus, was executed, the Pharisees petitioned Rome to punish those who had done it.  I know this sounds a bit odd, but you will notice that most of Jesus’s arguments are with the Pharisees over religious matters.  He even says that except that you become as religious as the Pharisees, you will advance little in the kingdom of heaven.  The problem with the Pharisees is they thought salvation came from earthly works rather than a love relationship with God.

When Paul decides to persecute the Christians, he is employed by the Sadducees to eliminate the Christians.  They were afraid that the Christians would bring down the wrath of Rome upon Jerusalem, and that they would lose their power and their wealth.

Another interesting bit of information we gleaned from the Old Testament has to do with Pentecost.  When Moses creates the tabernacle, God comes down and a column of fire to inhabit the tabernacle.  When Solomon creates the Temple, God comes down and a column of fire to live in the holy of holies.  When Herod built his Temple, and which we call the second Temple, God does not come down and fire.  There was no visible sign that God approved of the Temple.  When the disciples of Jesus visited the Temple during the time of Pentecost, there was a sound of on us mighty rushing wind and fire came down, not on the Temple, but on the disciples.  We are the temples, the tabernacle, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.  God came down on us.  Later, Paul says, we are the Tabernacles, the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  God no longer dwells in a building, but in the hearts of believers.

Pentecost is an interestingly misunderstood event in the Bible.

Fire is a symbol in the Bible.  The word light is a word with more meanings than just a single meaning.  Darrow and Bryan struggle with it in “Inherit the Wind.”  When they created the tabernacle, God came down in a pillar of fire.  When Solomon built God’s temple, God entered it in  a column of fire, but when Herod build his stunning temple, one which even the pagans came to look at with awe, no light appeared.  No sign from heaven to earth.

Then, Christ came, lived, learned, and died.  The disciples waited and were prepared.  Christ ascended and then, when they visited the Temple, known to the Jews as the house, on the day when God descended on the Mountain and three thousand died for their sins, the disciples gathered and the fire came down.  But it didn’t come down on the temple, the spirit of God poured down and over his new dwelling, the minds and hearts of his children.  We are the tabernacle, the temple, the Holy of Holies.  Three thousand were saved, not lost, and we became the dwelling place of God.  A historic, but not necessarily understood change.  Do you think that most folks who celebrate Pentecost realize what it means to them.

Repentance is more than just a confession and an “ I’m sorry.”  True repentance involves changing your life, your daily life, the way you think.  Repentance is a painful and visible change.

Faith is a belief so deep that it changes who and what you are.  It is not a simple belief that Christ is the son of God.  The Bible mentions that Satan believes that God is God and exists.

The study of the Bible is a difficult and yet simple task.  The problem is that we have dismembered it into verses and chapters and even two books.  It makes it hard to follow.  We read it in pieces and even the pieces are not in the correct order, kind of like reading a novel by picking pages at random.  We mutter about how confusing it is and often they are bewildered why someone behaves in a certain way, when it is clear what is going on if you know the whole story in order.   People who find Revelation opaque often ignore the fact that it ties up the loose ends in the Old Testament.

Joseph

One of the troublesome ideas that I have but can’t trace back to the Bible is the idea that Joseph is an arrogant little brat because he reported that dream that God sent him to his brothers.  No where else in the Bible, as far as I know, does God punish one of His for reporting a dream that he sent.

First, the embroidered coat is a sign that his father thought his conduct superior to his brother.  It was a sign of approval.  Later, Egyptian reactions to this enslaved boy tend to substantiate God and Jacob’s judgment.  His brother’s behavior also seems to reinforce God’s judgment.  We should be more willing to  respect another’s blessing and look to our own failings.  When Christ announces his mission, his brothers attempt and succeed in killing him.

The whole theme seems to have begun with the Cain and Abel episode.   Abel is singled out by God as being approved and Cain is less than approved.   Cain takes action to kill brother, Esau and Jacob, Jesus and Judas, Isaac and Ishmael.  A repetitive theme.  But for some reason, Joseph is reproved, not only by his family, but a fairly large number of Sunday School teachers.

When Samuel reports his dream to Eli, there is no record of his “brothers” spending much time caring.  The Israelite nation treated Moses who has just delivered them with a considerable amount of abuse.   One of the most important commandments is to love your brother.  Perhaps it is a rather careless cultural thing.

Jesus is our brother.  The world tries to humiliate and destroy him.  Throw him In a hole, sell him and his people into slavery.  And how will he and his kin react to this arrogant, irrational cruelty.  Punish them back or help to save them.

Do something for your arrogant, cruel, ungrateful brothers this week.  Quietly, without fanfare or identification do something for your brothers.

After the destruction of the world of Lot, his daughters give him wine.  Gen. 19:32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.  He is than naked and once again sin intrudes into a world cleansed of Sodom.

Forbidden Fruit

I find the first three chapters of Genesis fascinating.  Possibly the worst thing that Darwin has done to us is to make every discussion of these chapters a debate on the age of the earth. 

When I taught in Nicaragua, I would open every class period with a look at these three chapters.  The book of Genesis is an introduction to the rest of the Bible.  It seems to introduce the themes that stretch through scriptures to the book of Revelation.  The book of Revelation is, in my estimation, a review of all that has happened in the Bible.  A careful examination of the book reveals that it is a collage of verses and images and incidents from all the scripture that came before, almost like all of history from God’s point of view.  But I want to start by looking at some of the themes in the first three chapters.

I believe that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the garden was the grape and not the apple.  This is due to an error in translation.  Malus (Bad) and Malum (Apple).  The words are very similar in Latin and early writers thought that they belonged together – Apple and evil.  Very similar, but I also believe that it is important to the understanding of the Bible that we explore some of the themes introduced in the story of creation and the fall.

The first reference to the potential for evil comes in Genesis 2:16: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Oddly enough, evil does seem to have exist before the fall. There are some people who refer to Adam’s fall as the second fall.  The first and very similar fall was that of Satan, who was tumbled out of heaven because he wanted to be God.  Somewhat an echo of Adam and Eve’s ambition.

One of the interesting words in the Bible is the word vine and tree.  They seem to be the same word.  How they are translated depends on the judgment of the translator.  There are several occurrences of this in the Bible.  The Hebrew language is one of the smallest.  Words are forced to mean several things.  The word used in the passage when Eve is taken from the side of Adam is the same word used in describing the side of the tabernacle.  Future discussion.

Keep track today of how many times you worried about something that is happening or might happen.  If you believe that God is taking care of you, you must practice putting the problems out of your mind and simply enjoying the moment.

Based on a prayer found on http://www.prayer-and-prayers.info/christian-prayers/prayer-for-anxiety.htm

Dear Lord,
I need you now for I am full of fear.
Reading your Word and resting in your arms weaves a wall around me,as I ask you to come and take my burdens.You take each burden, one by one. I know you care or me and help me what carry what I can not carry alone. Replace them with your humble and gentle yoke so that I will find rest for my soul today. I receive your gift of peace that you pour into my mind and heart. Thank you that I can lie down tonight in peace and sleep. I know that you, Lord, will keep me safe. I am not afraid because you are always with me. Please keep me daily, Lord, in your perfect peace. 

Amen

Forbidden Fruit

I believe that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the garden was the grape and not the apple.  This is due to an error in translation.  Malus (Bad) and Malum (Apple).  The words are very similar in Latin and early writers thought that they belonged together – Apple and evil.  Very similar, but I also believe that it is important to the understanding of the Bible that we explore the idea of the grape.  The apple appears very little in the Bible, but the grape is a central theme through out scriptures.

Much of what seems to be dramatic detail in the New Testament is actually fundamental truth.  The cup of wine at the Last Supper is born from the events of the Old Testament.

The first reference to the potential for evil comes in Genesis 2:16: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.  This is the forbidden fruit.  Why is it forbidden?  Because it represents knowledge which is potentially harmful to man.

Previously, man allowed God to make the choices as to what was beneficial and what was harmful.  When man eats of the tree, he can now use his human faculties and reason to decide what is good and what is bad.  Man has rather limited senses and reasoning power.  Before he let God decide, now he wants to decide.

There is only one fruit in the Bible that’s forbidden. Later, if a man is to make himself holy, he must take Nazarite vows.  He must avoid not only wine, but anything connected with the grape.  Numbers 6:3 says  He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried. All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree. Notice the vine is a tree. Vine tree–that’s forbidden fruit.

Why is the vine tree for a Nazarite “forbidden fruit”?  Because it was the fruit that separated God and man.  The Nazarite was trying to bridge that gap.

The vine tree is obviously forbidden fruit because it’s a type of blood,  The vine tree, grape juice, represents blood. Matthew 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament. Then grape juice is a type of blood!.  Jesus was offering the same fruit as the serpent.  But while accepting the knowledge from the serpent was ruinous, accepting the cup, blessed by God was a reversal of the Genesis event.

So now, we know that a tree is forbidden, and grape juice is forbidden to the Nazarite; but, if grape juice is a type of blood, then blood should be forbidden. Let’s turn to Genesis 9, and notice that blood is forbidden. So blood and grape juice are inseparably connected. Genesis 9:4: But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

It should be also noted that the wine was not drunk in the Old Testament worship but poured out on the ground.  No Levite could enter the tabernacle after having drunk wine.  Hannah was rebuked by Eli because he believed that she had drunk wine.

But there was one place that wine was required in Jewish culture.  The Jews believed Adam ate the fruit to retain his relationship with evil.  This is not stated in the Bible but the tradition does show up several times in the Bible .  A Jewish man proposing to a Jewish girl pays homage to the tradition by sharing a glass of wine with her.  Today this tradition is remembered with a toast at the wedding.

A  Jewish father share wine with his family as a sign that they are bound together.

The first manmade miracle in the Old Testament that Moses does in going down to the land of Egypt is in Exodus 4.

The first miracle Christ does in His ministry is in John 2. And, in both cases, you’re dealing with the transformation of something into blood or into grape juice. John 2, verse 9: When the ruler of the feast had the water that was made wine–now there’s water turned into grape juice. Verse 11: “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee.”

Old Testament, Exodus 4, verse 9. Now the first two signs Moses does are done in the presence of Pharaoh, and nothing happens.  Moses produces a Serpent, but Pharaoh and his court are comfortable with the serpent.

But the first sign that affects the land of Egypt is in verse 8. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.

So the first thing Moses does is take that water and turn that water into blood.

An interesting parallel occurs in the story of Noah.  God uncreates the earth and then proceeds to recreate it.  Separating earth and water, plants appearing, animals repopulating the earth and Noah becomes a new Adam.  The first thing he does is to plant a garden and eat its fruit and lies there naked.

Adam is naked; Noah is naked. Genesis 9:20-21 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;…

The Lord told Adam, Be fruitful and multiply. He told Noah, Be fruitful and multiply.

He told Adam, Replenish the earth. He told Noah, Replenish the earth.

One of Noah’s boys is under a curse (Canaan); one of Adam’s boys is under a curse (Cain).

Habakkuk 2:15 Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!

Verse 32    For their vine is of the vine of Sodom…

their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:
Their wine is the poison of dragons,
and the cruel venom of serpents.

A beautiful picture by an underrated artist.  An interesting variation on the vision of Jacob.

The basic principles of literary hermeneutic are

1. The text of the Bible is the focus of study.
2. The sources or time  or place of composition is  not of any interest.
3. There is little interest in the historicity of a story, book, or passage.
4. It accepts in the interest of simplicity the traditional authorship of the passage.
5. It assumes that every word, phrase, and episode belongs.