Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

God sometimes gets a bad rap for his actions in the Old Testament. If you want to see this in practice, just go on over to Yahoo! Answers and search “Old Testament.” You can bet that many of the results will be questions like “Why is God so great and wonderful in the New Testament and so horrifically evil in the Old Testament?” For those who study the Old Testament, these types of questions can get a bit wearisome (SEE THIS POST).

First, the questions assume there is nothing difficult about God in the New Testament. I can only assume that those who ask these questions have never read the Book of Revelation or thought deeply about the concept of an eternal hell. Second, these questions miss a great deal in the Old Testament about the love of God. Don’t get me wrong. There are some verses/passages in the Old Testament that absolutely do give me a bit of trouble (like 1 Sam. 15.3). And, this is not to say that the depiction of the love of God in the Old Testament is not in some ways difficult (he delivers his people from Egypt [a good thing] by killing Egyptian babies [a bad thing]?) But, to make it out like God is completely and thoroughly wicked in the Old Testament is a serious misreading. Sometimes there are different voices in the Old Testament that are saying different things. With that said, today I am providing a list of seven verses from the Old Testament that pertain to the love of God. If you have any other favorites feel free to comment below.

1. For love of your fathers he chose their descendants and personally led you out of Egypt by his great power… (Deut 4.37 – from today’s lectionary reading).
2. When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son (Hos 11.1 – God depicted as father. Sound familiar?)
3. As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort (Is 66.13 – God depicted as a mother comforting her child).
4. I will heal their defection, I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them (Hos 14.5 – God depicted as a healer who loves freely).
5. It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations (Deut 7.7 God’s reasoning for choosing Israel).
6. …the LORD appears to him from afar: With age-old love I have loved you; so I have kept my mercy toward you (Jer 31.3).
7. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, He will sing joyfully because of you,… (Zeph 3.17).

I have previously posted on henotheism in the Old Testament and explained what this is. Today’s Psalm contains another statement that reflects henotheism. It reads as follows: “For you, LORD, are most high over all the earth; You are very highly exalted over all gods” (emphasis added). Here again the existence of other deities is not denied (though this does happen later). Yet there is only one deity who is deemed worthy of worship.

I guess Brooke Lester’s post about the Obama-Antichrist video got Bryan over at Hevel.org stirred up a bit. In a similar vein, he decided to address this Bible Code nonsense. I feel very much like Bryan. This kind of silliness distracts people from actually reading the Bible. Be sure to read Bryan’s post but also keep in mind these considerations:

1. Bible Codes would require a text of the Hebrew Bible which is certain; however, the text of the Hebrew Bible is not certain. For instance, there is significant uncertainty with regard to the text of Jeremiah. Even for the Book of Isaiah, which is one of our more certain texts, we have manuscripts with spelling differences. Even if one letter is missing or added to a manuscript this would make any finding from Bible Code “research” invalid (see this post about how an entire word may be missing/added in Isaiah).
2. The original text of the Hebrew Bible contained no vowel letters. In Bible Code “research” these would have to be supplied by the “researcher.” What if they are supplying the wrong vowels?
3. Finally (though much more could be said), the same practices used for finding Bible Codes have been found to work for texts like Moby Dick. Was Melville writing under divine inspiration?

I didn’t realize this until this morning, but I found out that there is some buzz around a video on YouTube proposing to explain from the Bible why Barack Obama is the Antichrist. I normally don’t give this kind of stupidity a second thought, but then I saw that the video had over 150,000 views. So, I thought I would address it on my blog by pointing you to a post by Brooke Lester where he goes into a great amount of detail to debunk the video. Please, don’t just watch the video. Read Brooke’s blog post (you will probably learn a lot). There are such idiotic statements in the video, like “Aramaic is the oldest form of Hebrew.” Please, don’t fall for this kind of nonsense.

So… I had a horrible experience with a radio station giveaway last Friday. Let me preface this by saying that I have never won any kind of contest in my life. But, my wife registered us for this radio contest for which the prize was a trip to see one of my favorite bands of all time in one of my favorite vacation spots from when I was a child. (I’m intentionally being fuzzy on the details because I do not want a radio station suing me for defamation).

At any rate, the station called one day early last week and said we were finalists.  We had no idea how many finalists there were, and the weather was pretty bad out on the day of the drawing.  We thought some people might stay home.  So, we figured we would give it a shot to go to the drawing.

(Hanging out and looking
happy before the drawing)

We got to the location where the drawing was to take place and found out there were 24 finalists.  We hung out for a while with free refreshments.  Then, they did the drawing.  It was a reverse drawing, so the first person drawn was the first person out.  To make a long story short, I got all the way down to the end when they realized that there were only three tickets left in the jar and four contestants left standing.  Something was not right.  The winner was to be the person with their ticket left in the jar at the end…

(Me thinking: Wow!
I might really win this trip)

But, for some reason they kept going.  Guess what… I was the last one standing, but for the wrong reason.  Somehow the person in charge of putting the tickets in the jar had missed my ticket and it never made it into the drawing.  I am standing there thinking “Did I just win?”  And, then they realized what had happened and started the whole thing over again.  Next go round my ticket was about the fifth one drawn.  No trip.

At this point, I look back and think – if only they had stopped when there were three tickets left in the jar and four people left standing.  I think I could have left without the least sickening feeling.  But, the way things went down I left feeling like I had almost won this totally awesome thing only to have the rug pulled out from under me.  I’m sure I will get over it.  I’m sure it was an honest mistake that everyone running the contest seemed to feel badly about.  But I doubt I’ll be listening to that station for a while.  The person pulling tickets was a host of one of their shows, and the sound of his voice currently unsettles my stomach.

Today’s response was from Psalm 51. Here is part of Psalm 51 in Hebrew if you want to check it out. (Videos like this are great for your learning of Hebrew if you are studying).

Today’s lectionary reading contains one of the more popular statements in the Old Testament, namely that Moses was the meekest/most humble (or however it is translated in your version of choice) person among all people. I have always found this very interesting because Moses’ actions do not really line up with modern conceptions of what it means to be meek or humble. Growing up I always thought a person who was humble or meek was reserved and showed a bit of weakness. But, this really in no way depicts Moses. Take for example Numbers 25.4, which reads as follows:

4 The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and impale them in the sun before the Lord, in order that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.”

Those do not really sound like the words of someone who is reserved or who displays any weakness whatsoever. I am not sure what it would take for me to tell someone to impale another human being “in the sun before the Lord.” In fact, I in no way condone the statement here in Numbers 25.4. However, I think the passage can help us to redefine in our minds what the Bible means when it speaks about meekness.

What does Jesus mean when he says that the meek will inherit the earth? Taking into consideration the meekness of Moses, he certainly does not mean that those who are mild mannered and do not display fierce anger will inherit the earth. In fact, if we hold a proper kind of righteous indignation back, it is probable that we are not really being meek at all. We are being something else altogether.

John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry has put together a decent little summary of the Hebrew Bible in 1,000 words or less. With that type of restriction it would be easy to quibble about not enough space being given to this or that. But, I tend to agree that you have the Primary History and everything else can be seen in relationship to that. Read his summary HERE.

HERE is a link to a news story about a 2,000 year old Aramaic inscription. Found this story via Jim West (though I think he found it via someone else’s blog). He has a terrific blog, and it is worth subscribing to his RSS feed.

There is a very concentrated concern in the Book of Exodus that acts are being performed “so that you/he/they will know that I am the Lord,” sometimes “the Lord your God.” This goes both for pharaoh and for the Israelites. It seems strange that no one knows who the Lord is at this point in the Biblical story, at least with regard to the Israelites. Apparently there is some disconnect. The years of servitude must have made them forget. But, I think this is one of the lessons that the later generations learned (at least in principle, though it may not have made it into common practice) and that we find in the responsive reading for today. Psalm 78.3-4 reads as follows:

3    things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
4    We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.

Here the remedy for forgetting is making sure to pass on the glorious deeds of the Lord to their children, to the coming generation.  If the next generation is to know then the present generation must tell them.