I’ve just read my first blog post and it is soooo boring — part 2
You’ve heard enough about the person.
Now about the blog
Nobel Prize winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived the Soviet Gulag Archipelago, wrote, “The Bible is more known-about than known.”
This blog is about some of the marvellous discoveries that can be made by unimpressive, ordinary Saints when plumbing the depths of individual words used in the original Bible languages. The Holy Spirit chooses His words well and the English translations rarely pack the punch of the original inspired word. Often a deeper insight into just one, or a few, of the words in the original language provides the key which opens the door to a world of understanding previously unimagined. The professor of Greek at the Ezra Project (https://ezraproject.com/), Dr. John Bechtle, makes a comment along the lines of, “Having even a slight knowledge of the Bible Languages is the metaphorical difference between watching the game on a 1950s grainy monochrome TV and using a virtual hologram and being inside the game.” Soooo true.
Methodology
The gist of the methodology is the Big Mac Principle. If you try to stuff the whole burger in your mouth you will surely die. The trick is to take bight-sized pieces and chew them well before the next bight. That applies here. Getting to know God, one word at a time.
The Professor reveals the secret of fire for Bible Study.
- Words have more than one meaning.
As can be seen in the figure
- A word has only one meaning in a particular context.
The end of every post will probably be like waiting for the other shoe to drop. We live in the Land of the Catchphrase where it is expected that the answer to difficult questions be shorter than the original question — and contain no big words. Also, we suffer from being bombarded with mental clichés where words are taken for granted. We think we know what they mean but we don’t. “That seems to makes sense,” has more weight than, “That is what the facts are.” The aim will be to define the definition of the popular definition. In doing that it may be discovered that that the popular definition had nothing to do with what is written in the Word of God. L-O-R-E is not always L-A-W.
Any purists who may stumble in should be warned that the organising principle is that of, “A gram of inaccuracy saves a tonne of explanation.” So many of the apparent gotcha moments are probably already known. But — there will, no doubt, be authentic errors. The late American Bible teacher, Chuck Missler, kept reminding his students of Acts 17:11. That meant, “Check everything Chuck Missler says.” The same applies here. You MAY remember some of the things you read here. You WILL remember the errors you find. But when pointing these out, it is pointless just saying, “That’s wrong!” It must be, “That’s wrong because . . .” and show the evidence.
I have a friend whose Mother Tongue is Hebrew. He said, “When HaShem says, ‘Seek my face,’ think hormones.” Imagine two young lovers seeking each other in a crowd. Their eyes are darting about, their hearts are pounding, they are alive. That is the eagerness that God responds to when He promises, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” and He does not lie.
The major take-home for me is that the secret of understanding of every passage of the Written Word of the Living Word of God has been hiding from me in plain sight. It is the words written in the Written Word of the Living Word of God. But there are many passages containing many words.
The target audience for this blog is those who want to find the difference between L-O-R-E and
L-A-W. My prayer is that you will catch the fire and begin to contribute.
Perhaps no one will read this blog, let alone subscribe. Don’t expect anything polished. You may find it so confusing that it is impossible to decide if it’s nonsense.
Time will tell if this has been a God Idea or just a good idea.
So, if this study should help anyone that would be good — but it won’t get much better than it is. You will find it jerky as it lurches from one subject to another. You may have to work hard if you decide to read on.
The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime.
All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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