Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Word Study #1 - 27 March 2014

I’m going to start a series of posts, we’ll see how long I can keep them up.  Probably post once or perhaps twice a week.

I don’t claim to be a teacher, although I do enjoy teaching.  I prefer to call myself a student, because I like to study.  And, one of my favorite things to study is the Bible. 

What I am going to attempt to do is share some of the things I am learning.  I don’t claim these words to be the doctrine of any specific church or body of believers, although I think that some believers have held at least some of these beliefs at various times in history.  I don’t claim that any of these are correct, just that this is what I personally have come to believe.  Your mileage may vary.  Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.

The point of my study for the last couple of years was sparked by a person that saw me reading the Bible and asked me to tell him about what I was reading (he was functionally illiterate).  I began reading to him, and I don’t think I made it thru half a verse before he interrupted me to ask what “that” word meant.  I shortly realized that I wasn't certain myself what that particular word meant, which lead to the realization that most ‘religious’ people use buzzwords and that they have no idea of the real meaning behind those words.  This is true of many groups; as a computer geek I can use words that sound big and impress many, but usually I’m careful to know what II'm talking about.

One of the first things that I had to learn was that the Bible wasn't written by an American, or an English speaking person, or even a member of modern western civilization.  For the most part the Bible was written by members of a backwater tribe of middle eastern nomads over a period ending no later than 2,000 years ago and beginning perhaps 3,000 years before that.  The closest that I can imagine comparing them to is the indigenous North American peoples such as the Sioux or the Apache or the Dakota people.  They owned no property.  The family was the nucleus of the society.  Survival of the family came before anything else.  They didn't go to the supermarket or McDonald’s when they got hungry, in fact, for much of their history farming was unusual.  They hunted and gathered.  As nomadic shepherds, they lived from one good grazing spot to another.

The ancient Hebrew language reflected that lifestyle.  It is full of words that describe the concrete day to day struggle for life   One example:  The past is known, the future is unknown.  The Hebrew lived his life with his past always before him, he could see it.  The future was behind him, it was unknown.  This is a very fundamental change in outlook from what the modern day member of western civilization has.